PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 



I. The Bakerian Lecture. — On the Proofs of a gradual Rising of the Land in certain 

 parts of Sweden. By Charles Lyell, Jun. Esq. F.R.S. 



Received October 4, — Read November 27, 1834. 



At is now more than one hundred years since the Swedish naturalist Celsius ex- 

 pressed his opmion that the waters, not only of the Baltic, but of the whole Northern 

 Ocean, were gradually sinking ; and he represented their level as lowering at the rate 

 of forty Swedish inches in a century*. He observed that several rocks which not 

 long ago were sunken reefs and dangerous to navigators, had become in his time 

 above water ; that the sea was constantly leaving dry new tracts of land along its 

 borders ; that ancient ports had become inland towns ; and that old fishermen and 

 seafaring people could testify that at a variety of places, both on the shores of the 

 Baltic and the ocean, considerable changes had taken place within the time of their 

 memory, in the form of the coast and depth of the sea. Lastly he appealed to marks 

 which had been cut in the rocks before his time expressly to indicate the former level, 

 and the waters were observed to have fallen below these marks. 



This notion of a change continually in progress in the relative level of land and 

 sea was at first warmly controverted, and many facts were adduced to prove that 

 there had not been a general fall of the waters even in the Baltic. It was supposed 

 by many that there might have been some error in the observations, as the Baltic, 

 though free from tides, is often raised for several days continuously two or three feet 

 above its standard level by the melting of the snow, or by the prevalence of par- 

 ticular winds ; and it was remarked that the altered form of the coast and the shal- 

 lowing of the sea might be ascribed partly to new accessions of land at points where 

 rivers entered, depositing sand and mud, and partly to the drifting of large blocks 

 by ice, which are sometimes stranded and driven up on rocks and low islands so as 

 to raise their height. 



Playfair, in the year 1802, in his " Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory," de- 



* I have used the Swedish measure throughout this paper, for the sake of uniformity, when alluding to the 

 measurements made by Swedes. The Swedish foot, which is divided into twelve inches, agrees very nearly 

 with our own, being less than ours by three eighths of an inch only. 

 MDCCCXXXV. B 



