194 EXTINCT QUADRUPEDS. [CHAP. XXXIV. 



the valleys of small tributaries of the Ohio, such as those of Big 

 Bone Lick, in Kentucky, and Mill Creek, near Cincinnati, are 

 of geological celebrity, in consequence of the great number of 

 skeletons of extinct mammalia, such as the megalonyx, mastodon, 

 elephant, and others, which seem to have lived, and have been 

 mired in ancient morasses, before the land began to sink ; for the 

 great mass of fluviatile loam and gravel forming the terraces, has 

 been superimposed on the black bog earth containing such bones. 

 The teeth, however, and bones of similar extinct quadrupeds, 

 especially the mastodon, are occasionally met with scattered 

 through the incumbent gravel and loam, so that the same 

 assemblage of quadrupeds continued to inhabit the valleys while 

 the first change of level or the subsidence was going on. By sim 

 ply extending to the valley of the Mississippi, the theory before 

 applied to that of the Ohio, we may, as already stated at p. 142, 

 in reference to the Port Hudson bluffs, account for the geological 

 appearances seen in the larger and more southern area. 



It has been long ascertained that in Norway and Sweden a 

 gradual rise of the land above the sea has been going on for 

 many centuries, producing an apparent fall in the waters of the 

 adjoining ocean. The rate of elevation increases as we proceed 

 northward from Gothenburg to the North Cape, the two extremi 

 ties of this line being distant more than a thousand geographical 

 miles from each other, and we know not how much farther north 

 or south the motion may be prolonged under water. The rise of 

 the land, which is more than five feet in a hundred years at the 

 North Cape, gradually diminishes to a few inches in a century 

 iu the neighborhood of Stockholm, to the south of which the 

 upward movement ceases ; and in Scania, the southernmost part 

 of Sweden, appears to give place to a slight movement in an 

 opposite or downward direction. 1 * 



We also know that part of the west coast of Greenland, ex 

 tending about 600 miles north and south, has been subsiding for 

 three or four centuries, between latitudes 60 arid 69 N.f But 

 whether, in this instance, the rate of depression varies in different 

 parts of the sinking area, has not yet been determined. In spec- 

 * Principles of Geology, 7th Ed. p. 506. t See &quot; Principles,&quot; ibid. 



