THE LAND IN CERTAIN PARTS OF SWEDEN. 31 



round them, floated them off with their cargo and ballast from shallow into deep 

 water. 



I shall now state some general conclusions to which I have been led by the obser- 

 vations above described. It is evident from the position of the fossil shells of recent 

 species on the coast of the Baltic between Gefle and Sodertelje, and on the shores of 

 the ocean between Uddevalla and Gothenburg, that the tract of land (see Map, 

 Plate I.) which once separated the two seas in this region was much narrower at a 

 comparately modern period. Shells like those of Uddevalla have not only been found 

 a few miles due east of that place, but as far inland as Trolhattan in digging the 

 canal there*; and still further in the interior, about fifty miles from the coast at 

 Tusenddalersbacken, and other places near Lake Rogvarpen in Dalsland, on the west 

 side of Lake Wener (see Map, Plate I.). Of these fossils an account will be seen in 

 the works of Mr. Hisinger, to whom we are indebted for a valuable geological map 

 of the whole of the south of Sweden. They are found in Dalsland about as far above 

 the sea as near Uddevalla, or about two hundred feet high ; so that when they were 

 deposited, we must suppose the whole of that extensive Lake Wener, the surface of 

 which lies at an inferior level, to have formed part of the ocean. On the other hand, 

 when the marine shells of the environs of Upsala, Stockholm, and Torshalla lived in 

 the Baltic, we must suppose the whole of Lake Maeler to have been a bay of that sea. 

 Now the distance between the nearest points of Lakes Wener and Maeler is only 

 about seventy English miles, whereas there is more than three times that distance be- 

 tween Stockholm and Uddevalla, the nearest points at which the two seas now ap- 

 proach each other in the same direction. It is very desirable that Swedish geologists 

 should pursue this subject still further, and ascertain precisely how far the shells of 

 the two seas can be traced inland in opposite directions. 



In crossing from Stockholm to Sodertelje, Arboga, Orebro, Mariestadt, and We- 

 nersborg to Uddevalla, I passed the summit level of the country, about half-way be- 

 tween the Baltic and the ocean, near Bodarne, where the hills, as Von Buch remarks, 

 do not probably exceed five or six hundred feet in height. I found erratic blocks 

 scattered widely over the whole of this country, but they were much larger and more 

 numerous on the eastern than on the western watershed. There were also deposits 

 of stratified sand and gravel on the heights, but I was never able to discover any 

 shells in them, nor in the blue clay in the lower grounds bordering the lakes, except 

 very rarely, and these were of freshwater species ; as, for example, at the place before 

 mentioned near Lake Maeler not far from Torshalla, between Smedby and Kongsor. 

 It will naturally be asked, whether the appearance of the interior is generally such 

 as would agree with the hypothesis of a gradual rise, according to which we must 

 suppose that every tract has in its turn been first a shoal in the sea, and then for a 

 time a shore. It appeared to me, on comparing both the eastern and western coasts 

 and their islands with the interior, that the geological appearances and physical 



* See Hisinger's Anteckningar, vol. iv. p. 42. 



