360 Sir H. H. Howorth — Geological History of the Baltic. 



round about the principal directions of the yalleys and fjords, and are 

 found grouped with predominant frequency." 



What Mohn says of Norway has been equally well said by De Geer 

 about the tectonic structure of Sweden. "Up to this time " (i.e. 1893), 

 he says, " I have levelled the marine limit at about seventy different 

 points on the southern and central parts of Sweden and in a few 

 places in Southern Norway. For Northern Sweden I have three or 

 four approximate but important determinations by Hogbom, Suevonius, 

 and Munthe. . . . All the observations relate to one system of 

 iipheaval with the maximum uplift in the central part of the 

 Scandinavian peninsula along a line east of the watershed. . . . 

 Here the land must have been upheaved somewhat more than 

 1,000 feet (more than 300 metres), and around this ceVitre the isobars 

 are grouped in concentric circles, showing a tolerably regular 

 decrease of height in every direction towards the peripheral paits 

 of the region, until the line for zero is reached, outside of which 

 no sign whatever of upheaval is to be found" (Bull. Amer. Geol. 

 Soc, 1892). 



Elsewhere, Le Geer, who has done so much for explaining the 

 internal structure of the great Swedish anticlinal, has carefully 

 co-ordinated the facts and drawn lines of isobars showing that they 

 point to a focus of elevation along the medial line of the uplift, 

 curving down to lesser heights of similar altitude and synchrono^is in 

 date on the eastern and ivestern sides of Sweden respectively (see D. G., 

 Over Scandinaviens Nivaforandringar under Quartarperioden, p. 56). He 

 tells us the first points he determined were in Scania, and the heights 

 of the different points were nearly equal on both sides of the axis; 

 some were 50 metres high, somewhat more towards the south; adding 

 that he afterwards obtained these successively at 48, 42, 37, 32, and 

 21 metres, and that in quite open localities. 



Such being the structure of the great Swedish anticlinal, is it 

 strange or unexpected that it should in the south pass into a corre- 

 sponding and complementary synclinal hollow, with evidences, not of 

 rising, but of sinking? These are present (as I showed by much 

 evidence in the fourth part of this series of papers) all over the South 

 Baltic and extending to the North German coast. The line of 

 greatest depression, known as Forchhammer's line, runs east and west 

 through the middle of the Southern Baltic. Would it not be strange 

 if the lifting up of this long whale-backed peninsula and this corre- 

 sponding synclinal movement in the south had taken place without 

 any breaks and breaches at the points of greatest stress, namely, 

 where the upheaval and the subsidence, caused by the lateral thrust, 

 were the greatest? It would indeed be strange if it were not so. 

 In the subsiding south, as we shall see, the material was chalk ; in 

 the north, as we shall also see, the uplifted Primary rocks were the ones 

 to give way and be broken, and in both cases presenting the clearest 

 evidence of violent or momentary dislocations in places on a great 

 scale with tremendous bi'eakages in the rocks. The great subsidence 

 in the Southern Baltic is partially attested by submerged forests and 

 peat bogs south of Scania. If the submergence had been gradual 

 and progressive along a disappearing beach, these fragile relics would 



