NOTES TO BOOK XVIII. 687 



Sir R. Murchison has pointed out another operation 

 of ice in producing mounds of rocky masses ; namely, the 

 effects of rivers and lakes, in climates where, as in Russia, 

 the waters carry rocky fragments entangled in the winter 

 ice, and leave them in heaps at the highest level of the 

 waters. 



The extent to which the effects of glaciers, now 

 vanished, are apparent in many places, especially in Switz- 

 erland and in England, and other phenomena of the like 

 tendency, have led some of the most eminent geologists to 

 the conviction that, anterior to the period of our present 

 temperature, there was a Glacial Period, at which the tem- 

 perature of Europe was lower than it now is. 



(FA.) p. 607- Examples of changes of level of large 

 districts occurring at periods when the country has been 

 agitated by earthquakes are well ascertained, as the rising 

 of the coast of Chili in 1822, and the subsidence of the 

 district of Cutch, in the delta of the Indus, in 1819. 

 (Lyell, B. n. c. xv.) But the cases of more slow and 

 tranquil movement seem also to be established. The gra- 

 dual secular rise of the shore of the Baltic, mentioned in 

 the text, has been confirmed by subsequent investigation. 

 It appears that the rate of elevation increases from Stock- 

 holm, where it is only a few inches in a century, to the 

 North Cape, where it is several feet. It appears also that 

 several other regions are in a like state of secular change. 

 The coast of Greenland is sinking. (Lyell, B. n. c. xviii.) 

 And the existence of " raised beaches" along various coasts 

 is now generally accepted among geologists. Such beaches, 

 anciently forming the margin of the sea, but now far above 

 it, exist in many places ; for instance, along a great part 

 of the Scotch coast; and among the raised beaches of that 



