326 UPHEAVAL IN THE NORTH OF EUROPE. 



elevation may have been in many cases only relative and gradual, but 

 in others real and unequal ; that is, the area may have been removed 

 farther from the centre than it was before, by a force of lateral pres- 

 sure subject to inequality and cessation. In some cases of real de- 

 pression, and in many more of real elevation over a limited area, 

 the solid crust must be supposed to have been intensely folded. 



General upward pressure rarely if ever happens ; the crust would 

 be extended, and beyond a certain strain it would break, when the 

 broken parts would slide on one another so as to occupy a larger area, 

 and the result would be faults. Such conditions are apparently ob- 

 served in the region of the Rocky Mountains. 



In a case of real depression of a given tract, followed after a long 

 interval by elevation, the effects would vary according to the area 

 moved and the vertical range of the motion. If the area were so 

 extensive as to include a larger arc on the earth's surface, the crust 

 would subside into a smaller area, and be wrinkled, or otherwise 

 affected by compression and augmented heat. On the re-elevation of 

 such an area, faults would probably be produced ; this seems to have 

 been the case in many of our coal-fields, whose flexures are traversed 

 by later faults. If the subsiding area were small or narrow, and the 

 downward movement great, the rocks would sink into a larger area, 

 and faults might be expected. On the re-elevation of such a tract 

 much local disturbance and complicated internal movements among 

 the masses of the rocks would probably follow, and this may have 

 happened in the Belgian and Somersetshire coal-fields. 



The influences of these conditions have not yet passed away. 

 Scandinavia is rising and sinking, not in either case on account of 

 volcanic excitement, strictly so called, but by reason of internal changes 

 consequent on slow refrigeration. 



Upheaval of Land. In Smith Sound raised terraces occur at 

 from 32 to i ro feet above high- water mark. Other evidences of rise 

 consist in the existence of ruined houses high above the water, as at 

 Hunde Island Dr. Kane assumed the upheaval to take place north 

 of latitude 77, south of which the land is depressed. Over many 

 places in the Arctic lands, as on the summit of the Coxcomb range in 

 Earing Island, shells of living species occur many hundred feet above 

 the sea-level, which would indicate recent upheaval. 



On the coast of Norway, Professor Keilhau infers that the whole 

 country from Cape Lindernas to North Cape has been raised in com- 

 paratively recent times, the upheaval amounting on the S.E. coast to 

 more than 600 feet. Sir Charles Lyell in 1834 described the raised 

 sea-beaches at Uddevalla, which are 100 feet above the sea, and have 

 barnacles adhering to the gneiss. In 1730 a beach-mark was made 

 in the island of Loeffgrund, near Gefle, in the presence of Linnaeus, 

 which in 1839 had been elevated three feet; but farther north, by 

 the mouth of the river Tornea, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, 

 the land is rising at the rate of five feet in a century. The waters 

 over which the French expedition measured an arc of the meridian 

 are now replaced by meadows. 



