216 ON THE DIMINUTION OF THE WATERS, &C. 



c 



change would then abound along all their coasts. But 

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

 rical : 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 areequal- 

 ly,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 for~ 

 jnation commenced, evidently show that the water dis- 

 placed 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 subversion of a pre- 

 judice of such ancient date, the examples of these pe- 

 remptory proofs of its total want of foundation. 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 were acquainted with its 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 run- 

 ning 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 his conclusion, however, from these few facts, con- 

 trary to every thing observed on the coasts of this sea, 

 Mr. Play fair thinks himself authorized to maintain that 

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



