MODERN ERA. 583 



since fishing-huts were built on the coast. A fishing-hut, having a 

 rude fireplace within, was struck, in digging a canal, at a depth of 

 sixty feet. It is a common belief that over southern Sweden a very 

 slow subsidence is now in progress. 



In Greenland, a slow subsidence is taking place. For six hundred 

 miles from Disco Bay, near 69° N., to the Firth of Igaliko, 60° 43', 

 the coast has been sinking for four centuries past. Old buildings and 

 islands have been submerged ; and the Moravian settlers have had to 

 put down new poles for their boats, the old ones standing, Lyell 

 observes, " as silent witnesses of the change." 



On the North American coast, south of Greenland, along the coasts 

 from Labrador to New Jersey, it is supposed that similar changes are 

 going on. G. H. Cook concludes, from his observations, that a slow 

 subsidence is in progress along the coasts of New Jersey, Long Island, 

 and Martha's Vineyard; and, according to A. Gesner, the land is 

 rising at St. John's, in New Brunswick ; sinking at the island of Grand 

 Manan ; rising on the coast opposite, at Bathurst ; sinking about the 

 head of the Bay of Fundy, where there are regions of stumps, sub- 

 merged thirty-five feet at high tide, and about the Basin of Mines in 

 Nova Scotia, except, perhaps, on the south side ; and rising at Prince 

 Edward's Island. 



The Coral Islands of the Pacific are proofs of a great secular sub- 

 sidence in that ocean. The line C C C (Physiographic Chart), be- 

 tween Pitcairn's Island and the Pelews, divides coral islands from 

 those not coral ; over the area north of it, to the Hawaian Islands, all 

 the islands are atolls, excepting the Marquesas and three or four of 

 the Carolines. If then the atolls, as will be shown on a future page, 

 are registers of subsidence, a vast area has partaken in it, — measuring 

 6,000 miles in length (a fourth of the earth's circumference), and 

 1,000 to 2,000 in breadth. Just south of the line, there are extensive 

 coral reefs ; north of it, the atolls are large ; but they diminish toward 

 the equator, and mostly disappear north of it ; and, as the smaller 

 atolls indicate the greater amount of subsidence, and the absence of 

 islands still more, the line A A may be regarded as the axial line of 

 this great Pacific subsidence. The amount of this subsidence may be 

 inferred, from the soundings near some of the islands, to be at least 

 3,000. feet. But, as two hundred islands have disappeared, and it is 

 probable that some among them were at least as high as the average 

 of existing high islands, the whole subsidence cannot be less than 

 6,000 feet. This sinking may have begun in the Tertiary era. 



Since this subsidence ceased — for the wooded condition of the 

 islands is proof of its having ceased — there have been many cases of 

 isolated elevations. The following are some of the islands that have 



