26 



MR. LYELL ON THE PROOFS OP A GRADUAL RISING OF 



in a valley, the lower part of which had gained considerably in extent, within the 

 memory of persons now living, by the retreat of the waters. In descending to EUelos 

 on the eastern coast, opposite the island of Gulholmen, I observed shelly deposits 

 about fifteen feet above the level of the sea, in which were many specimens of the 

 Ostrea edulis, Saxicava rugosa, Cerithium reticulatum, and other shells, some of which 

 I had seen at Uddevalla, and others cast up on the shores in Orust. 



In regard to the island of Gulholmen, Celsius tells us that in his time forty pilots, 

 none of whom were under sixty years of age, having been assembled there, had una- 

 nimously declared to one Mr. Kalm that there was only fifteen feet depth of water in 

 places where in their youth there had been eighteen feet. He also mentions that one 

 of the pilots pointed out a small rock near Gulholmen, then rising two feet above the 

 water, which, when he was a child, was not visible *. 



The present inhabitants, as far as I conversed with them, are entirely ignorant of 

 any such statements having been recorded a century ago ; but on my demanding 

 whether the water stood now at the same level as in their younger days, they unani- 

 mously declared that it did not. Mr. Bruncrona, in his memoir before cited, men- 

 tions that on an insulated rock called Gulleskar, near the harbour of Gulholmen, 

 there was an iron ring to which ships were moored, and that this ring, when mea- 

 sured in 1820, was eight feet above the level of the water. Unfortunately, no parti- 

 culars are given; and as both the chief pilot of 1820 and another who assisted him 

 in the measurement were dead at the time of my visit, I could not ascertain with 

 certainty from what point of the ring they had begun their measurement, nor the 

 means they had taken to secure accuracy. Having obtained the assistance of Johan 

 WuNSCH, now chief pilot, I found the point where the ring is fixed into the rock to 

 be only seven feet five inches above the level of the sea, which was then declared to 

 be at its usual level, a very slight wind only blowing from the north-north-west, and 

 there being never any tides in the sea here. The iron ring, which has remained for 

 more than half a centuiy in its present place, is fifteen inches in diameter, and the 

 top of it stands more than eighteen inches above the level of the rock when it is 

 erect, in which position I found it, thus (see fig. 12), having been so placed for the sake 



Fig. 12. 

 Summit of the Gulleskar, with the Ring. 



* Celsius, Observations on the Diminution of the Waters of the Baltic and German Ocean.— Trans. Roy. 

 Acad, of Sweden. 



