507 



near Trelleborg. Now Mr. Nilsson informs me that this same 

 stone is a hundred feet nearer the water's edge than it was in Lin- 

 naeus's time, or eighty-seven years before. He also slates that there 

 is a submerged peat moss, consisting of land and freshwater plants, 

 beneath the sea at a point to which no peat could have been drifted 

 down by any river. But what is still more conclusive, it is found 

 that in sea-port towns, all along the coast of Scania, there are streets 

 below the high-water level of the Baltic, and in some cases below 

 the level of the lowest tide. Thus when the wind is high at Malmo 

 the water overflows one of the present streets, and some years ago 

 some excavations showed, an ancient street in the same place eight 

 feet below, and it was then seen that there had' evidently been an 

 artificial raising of the ground, doubtless in consequence of that sub- 

 sidence. There is also a street at Trelleborg and another at 

 Skaniir a few inches below high-water mark ; and a street at Ystad 

 is just on a level with the sea, at which it could not have been ori- 

 ginally built. I trust that we shall soon receive more circumstantial 

 details of these curious phaenomena, which are the more interesting 

 because it has been shown that the elevatory movement in Sweden 

 diminishes in intensity as we proceed southward from the North 

 Cape to Stockholm, from which it seems probable that after passing 

 the line or axis of least movement, where the land is nearly stationary, 

 a movement may be continued in an opposite direction, and thus 

 cause the gradual sinking of Scania. 



I cannot take leave of this subject without remarking that the 

 occurrence in various parts of Ii'eland, Scotland, and England, of 

 recent shells in stratified gravel, sand, and loam, confirm the opi- 

 nion which I derived from an examination of part of Sweden, 

 namely, that the formations usually called diluvial have not been 

 produced by any violent flood or debacle, or transient passage 

 of the sea over the land, but by a prolonged submersion of the 

 land, the level of which has been greatly altered at periods very 

 modern in our geological chronology. I now believe that by far 

 the greatest part of the dispersion of transported matter has been 

 due to the ordinary moving power of water, often assisted by ice, 

 and cooperating with the alternate upheaval and depression of land. 

 I do not mean wholly to deny that some sudden rushes of water 

 and partial inundations of the sea have occurred, but we are enabled 



VOL. II. 2 a 



