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ytiar evidencfEB 



HUTTONIAN THEORY. 



44S 



difference between the prefent and the ancient 



level of the fea, to more than forty feet. 



The 



ground on which the Botanic Garden of Edin- 

 burgh is lituated, after a thin covering of foil 

 is removed, confifts entirely of fea-fand, very 

 regularly Itratified, with layers of a black car- 

 bonaceous matter, in thin lamellce, interpofed 

 between them. Shells I believe are but rarely 

 found in it, but it has every other appearance of 

 a fea-beach. The height of this ground above 

 the prefent level of the fea is certainly not lefs 

 than 40 feet. 



389. On almoll every part of the coaft where the 

 rocks do not rife quite abrupt and precipitous 

 from the fea, fimllar marks of the lowering of 

 the fea, or the rifing of the land, may be obfer- 

 ved. On the fhores oppofite to ours, the fame 

 appearances are remarked. The author of the 

 Lettre Critique to M. de BufFon, tells us, that 

 he had found the bottom of a bafon at Dunkirk, 

 which he had reafon to think was dug about 

 950 years ago, ten feet and a half above the 

 prefent low-water mark, though it muft have 

 been originally under it. The bottom of this 



bafon is in the native chalk. 



From this, the 



fame author concludes, that the fea at Dunkirk 

 lowers its level at the rate of an inch nearly ki 



The obfervation was made in 



1762, 



feven 



years 



