LEVEL OF THE OCEAN. 405 



are equally visible, along the coasts of both these seas, 

 in all the new lands which have been formed on them, 

 and which, being perfectly horizontal from the point 

 where their formation commenced, evidently show that 

 the water displaced by them has been constantly at the 

 same level. Hence appears the necessity of multiplying, 

 as I have done, and shall continue to do, for the subver- 

 sion of a prejudice of such ancient date, the examples 

 of these peremptory proofs of its total want of founda- 

 tion. The rock mentioned by Celsius had probably been 

 observed by him at times when the level of the sea was 

 different ; its known differences much exceeding the 

 quantity here specified. As for the inscription near 

 Aspo, in a country abounding with lakes as much as that 

 which I have above described, if we are acquainted 

 with its t terms, we should probably find it to be, like 

 many which I have seen in various places along the 

 course of the Oder and the Elbe, the monument of some 

 extraordinary inundation of the land, from the sudden 

 melting of the snows in the mountains, at a time when 

 the water had been prevented from running off by an 

 equally extraordinary rise of the level of the sea ; of which 

 the effects on low coasts may extend very far inland. 



" By this conclusion, however, from these few facts, 

 contrary to every thing observed on the coasts of this 

 sea, Mr Playfair thinks himself authorised to maintain, 

 that the gradual depression, not only of the Baltic, but 

 of the whole northern ocean, is a matter of certainty ; af- 

 terwards he examines merely which of these two causes, 

 the subsidence of the sea itself, or the elevation of the 

 land around it, agrees the best with the phenomena ; and 

 he decides in favour of the latter, pointing out its accor- 

 dance with the Huttonian Theory."" 



