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the sea, and among them mussels which retauied their blue colour, 

 and emit a strong animal odour when thrown into the fire. 



I shall now turn from the modern changes observed in South 

 America to the evidences of recent alterations in the level of the 

 land in high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. Dr. Pingel, a 

 Danish mineralogist and naturalist, has communicated some facts 

 showing the gradual sinking of part of the west coast of Greenland. 

 It is now more than fifty years since Arctander inferred that this 

 coast had subsided, having noticed some buildings in the Fii'th 

 called Igalliko, on a low rocky island near the shore, almost en- 

 tirely submerged at spring tides. From this point, which is in lat. 

 60° 43' north, to Disco bay, extending to nearly the 69th degree of 

 north latitude. Dr. Pingel has traced various signs of the depression 

 of the land, ancient settlements of the Greenlanders and Moravians 

 being now overflowed by the sea. In one case the Moravians were 

 obliged to move inland the poles upon which their large boats were 

 set, and the old poles still remain beneath the water as silent wit- 

 nesses of the change. It is also mentioned that no aboriginal Green- 

 lander builds his hut near the water's edge. Having conversed with. 

 Dr. Pingel, at Copenhagen, on this subject, I am convinced that the 

 phsenomena cannot be explained away by reference to a rise of the 

 tides at particular points, the advance of the sea being general for 

 more than 600 miles from north to south, and caused not by the 

 undermining of cliffs and the denudation of land, but by submer- 

 gence of what was before above water. 



I am the less inclined to question the probability of a general sub- 

 sidence of the land in Greenland, because I now believe that an 

 equally slow and gradual movement is taking place, but in an oppo- 

 site direction, throughout a large part of Sweden and Finland. I 

 ventured formerly to controvert the proofs adduced in favour of 

 such an upheaval of land in those countries, although the fact had 

 been advocated by Celsius, the Swede, and in later times by Play- 

 *fair and Von Buch. But after visiting, in 1834, several parts both 

 of the eastern and western coasts of Sweden, I became satisfied that 

 an elevation is in progress, more rapid at Stockholm than further to 

 the south, and greater at Gefle than at Stockholm. The rate of 

 rise appears in some places to have amounted only to a few inches 

 in a century, in other places to several feet, but as far as I could 

 learn from the report of pilots, travellers, fishermen, and traders, 

 the alteration extends to the North Cape, and is probably felt over 

 a space more than 1000 miles in length from north to south, and 

 several hundred miles in breadth. The evidence is derived from 

 many sources, partly from tradition and from the recollection of 

 the oldest inhabitants and seafaring men, partly from the position 

 of ancient buildings on the coast, and partly from marks chiselled 

 at different periods on rocks bordering the sea, for the express 

 purpose of indicating the ancient standard level of the waters. As 

 the details of my own observations have been published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions of last year, I need only add that at one 

 spot to the south of Stockholm I saw what appeared to me a con- 



