360 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [April 8, 



island in the middle of the Baltic, which is at least 400 miles distant 

 from any elevation to which the term of mountain can be applied* ? 

 Referring to my published views concerning the manner in which 

 the drift itself has produced such appearances in these flat regions, 

 I will, before I quit the consideration of Gothland, say a few words 

 on the strong evidences which this island affords of having been 

 elevated from beneath the waters at a comparatively modern date. 

 In many ancient bays where the coasts do not present bluff cliffs 

 washed by the Baltic, like Hog-Klint on the east coast and Mount 

 Hoburg on the south t, terraces of water- worn and flattened shingle 

 are exhibited at heights of twenty or thirty feet above each other, 

 of which four or five may in some places be counted between a low 

 interior (or ancient) cliff or scar of limestone and the present sea, to 

 which there is usually a long slope from the lowest of these terraces. 

 The inland cliffs or scars present in many places the aspect of 

 having been washed by the waves, and the different terraces of shingle 

 (each having a level surface, and each exactly like that which the sea 

 washes at its present level) bespeak as many distinct upheavals, and 

 are evidently quite unlike anything which could have resulted from 

 the gradual upraising of the island. As the nature and relative po- 

 sition of numerous raised sea-beaches or shingle-banks in different 

 parts of Norway and Sweden lead to the same conclusion, the bear- 

 ing of this view upon our subject consists, not merely in establishing 

 a submarine condition of things totally irreconcileable with the ap- 

 plication of former glaciers to such tracts, but is, as will be seen, of 

 some theoretical value, in accounting for the motive causes of those 

 waves of translation to which I have elsewhere referred, and which, 

 independent of all glacial action, may by sudden upcasts have pro- 

 duced the violent transport and consequent rounding and rolling 

 onwards of much gravel and detritus. Now, it is important to ob- 

 serve, that these terraces in Gothland simply consist of the limestone 

 locally rolled and flattened into shingle, such as is actually formed 

 on the sea-beach ; and it is only after having passed over them, and 

 when we have reached to the height of 100 feet or more, that we 

 meet with the " Osar " drift of foreign coarse boulders mixed with 

 limestone debris, and surmounted here and there by great angular 

 blocks. All these facts seem to render it highly probable that Goth- 

 land was entirely beneath the sea when the northern or north-eastern 

 drift was being carried over it. This drift, however, violently affected 

 its surface, after which the blocks were irregularly wafted in such 

 manner as not to destroy their angularity, and therefore, as we sup- 



* I may here mention also, that the Lower Silurian limestones forty miles to 

 the south of St. Petersburg were observed by M. de Verneuil last year to exhibit 

 exactly similar phaenomena in a region also entirely void of all mountains, the di- 

 rection of the markings being the same, or from N.N.E. to S.S.W. The limestone 

 of the low island of Dago has also, according to Professor Eichwald, been in the 

 same way affected, and that of Esthonia has presented similar phaenomena ac- 

 cording to Colonel Osersky. 



t This latter, though described as a lofty mountain by Linnaeus, is really only 

 a fine bold cUff, less than 200 feet above the sea. 



