24 . MR. LYELL ON THE PROOFS OF A GRADUAL RISING OF 



tion 206 English feet above the sea*. I searched in vain for the Balani round the 

 boundary of gneiss at its contact with the beds of shells, as also on some insulated 

 rocks of gneiss which had been newly laid bare by the workmen, the shelly matter 

 being removed as materials for the repair of the roads. I presume, however, that it 

 was in just such a situation as that last mentioned that M. Brongniart found the 

 adhering barnacles; for under similar circumstances I afterwards found them in 

 another place, called Kured, about two miles north of Uddevalla -f-. Here a mass of 

 white shells has been laid open to the depth of forty feet, in a quarry resembling 

 singularly, when seen at a distance, one of our chalk-pits. Although now two 

 miles from the nearest sea, and a hundred feet or more above it, they evidently 

 fill what has once been a narrow channel, or fiord, bounded by rocks of gneiss. 

 The deposit now forms a flat inland meadow, the fertility of which is contrasted 

 with the steep and barren rocks which rise above it on all sides. It consists here 

 almost exclusively of broken and entire shells, which lie in thin strata. They have 

 been used largely both for making lime and for road materials ; and the removal of 

 part of them has exposed a ledge and precipice of gneiss, which they must previously 

 have covered to some depth. Adhering to the face of this precipice, I found the 

 circular supports of many large Balani. Some of these supports (see Plate II. 

 figs. 38, 39.) were three quarters of an inch in diameter ; and being white, they spotted 

 the rock, so as to present at a distance exactly the appearance of lichens. I also 

 found in horizontal clefts between the rocks pendent barnacles, fixed to the roof so 

 firmly that I was able to break off pieces of the hard gneiss on which the shells still 

 remained attached. In some places small zoophytes {Cellepora} Lam.) were ad- 

 hering to the rock or to the Balani ; and I also found some of the Cellepores with 

 the support of the Balani partially covering them. These corals and adhering shells, 

 therefore, must have grown upon the gneiss before the accumulation of drift shells 

 had filled up this valley, once a submarine hollow. I had always imagined that the 

 shelly formations near Uddevalla resembled ancient beaches of the ocean which had 

 been upraised, but they are in fact stratified formations of sand, clay, and gravel, and 

 in several places almost entirely of shells, which have filled up at some former period 

 the deep bays and fiords of a sea like that now bounding this coast. The quantity 

 and variety of the shells at Capellbacken, Kured, and Bracke reminded me of the 

 deposits of Grignon and,Damerie in the Paris basin ; but it is curious to reflect, that 

 although the shells are almost equally well preserved in both these regions, they are 

 specifically so distinct, that in the one it is scarcely possible to find a recent species, 

 while in the other nearly all, perhaps every one of the species, belong to the German 

 Ocean. The list of the shells which I collected here in one day will be found at the 

 end of this paper ; and although it will probably give but an imperfect idea of the 



* Anteckningar, &c., v. p. 81. 



t M. Beongniart says that he found the barnacles " un peu au dessus de I'amas coquillier," (Tableau des 

 Terr. p. 89) ; but this may refer to what then remained of the shelly mass. 



