364- PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [ApHl 8, 



an old Danish map of so late a date as 1676, in which such fiords 

 and arms of the sea are laid down to a much greater extent than at 

 present; and connecting these by dotted lines, the learned prelate 

 brings Gothland before his reader's eye as a group of islets which 

 have since been united; not, as geologists would now very generally 

 suppose, by the elevation of the land, but, as is the belief of the 

 natives, by the depression of the waters. I may further add, that 

 though prevented during my stay of ten days in the island from 

 visiting the spot, I was informed on very credible authority, that 

 large iron rings for the attachment of vessels are still to be seen on 

 the sides of inland rocks facing these marshy depressions, a circum- 

 stance I am well disposed to believe, knowing that such proofs of 

 the ancient ingress of the sea are not unfrequent in parts of Sweden 

 far inland of Gottenburg, and in other situations widely removed 

 from the present sea, but to which a very small change of the rela- 

 tive level of land and water would afford access by boats. 



In framing the above hypothesis respecting the former condition 

 and changes of the surface of Gothland from remote times to our 

 own period, I must beg it to be understood, that the terraces to 

 w^hich I have alluded are not to be seen at or near the bluff and 

 rocky shores and under the steep cliffs north or south of Wisby, 

 where travellers usually reconnoitre the island, but that they occur 

 in several parts of the island to the north of Klinte, and to the north 

 of Bursvik on the west coast, and particularly near Lansberg on the 

 south-eastern coast, where the physical features and the shelving 

 nature of the shore have combined to favour the accumulation of 

 ancient shingle beaches, and to expose a long modern talus beneath 

 them *." 



Whilst Gothland, from the nature of its subsoil, can only afford 

 traces of striation and grinding down of the limestone in those 

 places where that destructible rock has been covered by superin- 

 cumbent gravel, the great cluster of islets, the Aland Isles, which 

 lie between Abo and Stockholm, offer the most surprising evidences 

 of hard crystalline gneissose rocks having been worn down and 

 striated on their northern sides, and presenting abrupt escarpments 

 on their southern faces. The traveller who simply passes by the 

 steam-boat between Stockholm and Abo, and from the latter place 

 to Helsingfors, traverses hundreds, and indeed, including small 

 rocky islets, I may say thousands of isles, throughout which he can 

 observe no exception to this remarkable phaenomenon, the more 

 strikingly confirmative of the views I entertain respecting the cause 

 of such results, since none of these isles rise much more than 100 

 feet above the water, and all are very widely remote from any moun- 

 tain chain. 



* My chief object in Gothland being the identification of its calcareous rocks 

 with the Upper Silurian of our own country, I could not devote much time to vi- 

 siting all the spots where the surface is striated and grooved ; but I was informed 

 by Dr. Colmarden that he had observed grooves and striae similar to those I have 

 described in various parts of the island, wherever, in short, the superincumbent 

 gravel had been removed for the repairing of the roads. 



