446 A POPULAR EXPOSITION OF THE 
that the sea cannot go down or change its level at one place without 
doing the same generally all over the world. 
To afford a few brief illustrations, it may be observed that on several 
occasions within the present century, large portions of the Pacific 
coast of South America have been raised bodily above the sea, leaving 
beds of oysters, mussels, &c., exposed above high-water mark. The 
phenomenon, to the inhabitants of the coast, appeared naturally to be 
due rather to a sinking of the waters than to an actual elevation of 
the land; but at a certain distance north and south of the raised 
districts, the relative levels of land and sea remain unaltered: and 
hence, if the sea had gone down within the intervening space, its surface 
must have presented an outline of this character ~\______ 7 , 
a manifest impossibility. 
The land is also known to be slowly rising and sinking in countries 
far removed from centres of volcanic activity. Careful observations 
have shown, for example, that the northern parts of Sweden and 
Finland are slowly rising, and the south and south-eastern shores of 
the Scandinavian peninsula are slowly sinking: whilst around Stock- 
holm there is no apparent change in the levels of land and sea. The 
whole of the western coast of Greenland is slowly sinking; buildings 
erected on the shore by early missionaries, being now in places under 
water. A slow movement of depression, it is likewise inferred, is 
taking place along a considerable extent of the Atlantic sea-board of 
the United States. (See Canadian Journal, vol. ii. new series, p. 480.) 
On the shores of Newfoundland, of Cornwall, and other districts, 
examples occur of sub-marine forests, or of the remains of modern 
trees, in their normal position of growth, below low water-mark ; 
whilst in neighbouring localities no change of level appears to have 
taken place. Besides which, without extending these inquiries fur- 
ther, we know that many fofsiliferous strata are hundreds, and even 
thousands, of feet above the present sea-level :—on the top of the 
Collingwood escarpment, for example, we find strata contaming ma- 
rine fossils at an elevation of over 1500 feet above the sea; and on 
the Montreal mountain, shells of existing species occur at an eleva- 
tion of about 500 feet. And hence, if these strata had been left dry 
land by the sinking of the oceanic waters in which they were deposited, 
an immense body of water, extending over the whole globe, must in 
some unaccountable manner have been caused wholly to disappear. 
It is therefore now universally admitted, that the sedimentary rocks 
