I08 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



and with wonderful prevision, considering the time he 

 wrote and the Hmited observations he could make, 

 claimed that it is not the sea which has risen or fallen, 

 but the land itself which is sometimes raised up and 

 sometimes depressed, while the sea-bottom may also 

 be elevated or sunk down. He refers to such facts 

 as deluges, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and 

 sudden sweUings of the land beneath the sea. 



" And it is not merely the small, but the large 

 islands also, not merely the islands, but the conti- 

 nents which can be lifted up together with the sea ; 

 and, too, the large and small tracts may subside, for 

 habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and m.any 

 others, have been engulfed by earthquakes." * 



But it was not until eighteen centuries later that 

 this doctrine, under the teachings of Playfair, Leo- 

 pold von Buch, and Elie de Beaumont (1829-30) 

 became generally accepted. In 1845 Humboldt re- 

 marked, " It is a fact to-day recognized by all geolo- 

 gists, that the rise of continents is due to an actual 

 upheaval, and not to an apparent subsidence occa- 

 sioned by a general depression of the level of the 

 sea" (Cosmos, i). Yet as late as 1869 we have an 

 essay by H. Trautschold f in which is a statement 

 of the arguments which can be brought forward in 

 favor of the doctrine that the increase of the land 

 above sea level is due to the retirement of the sea. J 



* Quoted from Lyell's Principles of Geology, eighth edit., p. 17. 



f Btilletin Socie'ltf Imp. des Naturalistes de Moscoii, xlii. (1869), 

 pt. I, p. 4, quoted from Geikie's Geology, p. 276, footnote. 



X Suess also, in his Anlitz, etc., substitutes for the folding of the 

 earth's crust by tangential pressure the subsidence by gravity of por- 

 tions of the crust, their falling in obliging the sea to follow. Suess 



