404 LEVEL OE THE OCEAN. 



" If we proceed further to the north, to the shores of 

 the Baltic for instance, we have undoubted evidence of 

 a change of level in the same direction as on our own 

 shores. The level of the sea has been represented as 

 lowering at so great a rate as forty inches in a century. 

 Celsius observed, that several rocks which are now above 

 the water, were not long ago sunken rocks, and danger- 

 ous to navigators ; and he took particular notice of one 

 which, in the year 1680, was on the surface of the wa- 

 ter, and, in the year 1731, was 20 J Swedish inches above 

 it. From an inscription near Aspo, in the lake Melar, 

 which communicates with the Baltic, engraved, as is 

 supposed, about five centuries ago, the level of the sea 

 appears to have sunk in that time no less than thirteen 

 Swedish feet. All these facts, with many more which 

 it is unnecessary to enumerate, make the gradual depres- 

 sion, not only of the Baltic, but of the whole Northern 

 Ocean, a matter of certainty." Playfaifs Illustrations, 

 p. 445. 



That indefatigable and accurate observer De Luc, ha* 

 the following commentary on the preceding passage . 



" It would be unnecessary- to mention even the two in- 

 considerable facts above, if the depression of the level of 

 the seas were indeed a matter of certainty ; for the best 

 authenticated and the least equivocal monuments of their 

 change would then abound along all their coasts. But 

 proofs are every where found that such a change is chi- 

 merical : they may be seen in all the vales coming down 

 to these seas, in which there is no perceptible impression 

 of the action of any waters but those of the land, and no 

 vestige, through their whole extent, of any permanent 

 abode of those of the sea ;^ and proofs to the same effect 

 2 



