Ch. v.] not the sea lowered, 45 



position relatively to the sea. There are several distinct grounds for 

 preferring this conclusion. First, it will account equally for the position 

 of those elevated masses of marine origin in which the stratification re- 

 mains horizontal, and for those in which the strata are disturbed, broken, 

 inclined, or vertical. Secondly, it is consistent with human experience 

 that land should rise gradually in some places and be depressed in 

 others. Such changes have actually occuiTed in our own days, and are 

 now in progress, having been accomjDanied in some cases by violent con- 

 vulsions, while in others they have proceeded so insensibly, as to have 

 been ascertainable only by the most careful scientific observations, made 

 at considerable intervals of time. On the other hand, there is no evi- 

 dence from human experience of a lowering of the sea's level in any 

 region, and the ocean cannot sink in one place without its level being 

 depressed all over the globe. 



These preliminary remarks will prepare the reader to understand the 

 great theoretical interest attached to all facts connected with the position 

 of strata, whether horizontal or inclined, curved or vertical. 



Now the first and most simple appearance is where strata of marine 

 origin occur above the level of the sea in horizontal position. Such are 

 the strata w^hich we meet with in the south of Sicily, filled with shells 

 for the most part of the same species as those now living in the Mediter- 

 ranean, Some of these rocks rise to the height of more than 2000 feet 

 above the sea. Other mountain masses might be mentioned, composed 

 of horizontal strata of high antiquity, which contain fossil remains of 

 animals wholly dissimilar from any now known to exist. In the south 

 of Sweden, for example, near Lake Wener, the beds of one of the oldest 

 of the fossiliferous deposits, namely, that formerly called Transition, and 

 now Silurian, by geologists, occur in as level a position as if they had 

 recently formed part of the delta of a great river, and been left dry on 

 the retiring of the annual floods. Aqueous rocks of about the same age 

 extend for hundreds of miles over the lake-district of North America, 

 and exhibit in like manner a stratification nearly undisturbed. The 

 Table Mountain at the Cape of G\ ood Hope is another example of highly 

 elevated yet perfectly horizontal fe:."^.ta, no less than 3500 feet in thick- 

 ness, and consisting of sandstone of very ancient date. 



Instead of imagining that such fossiliferous rocks were always at their 

 present level, and that the sea was once high cough to cover them, we 

 puppose them to have constituted the ancient bei of the ocean, and that 

 they ^^ere gradually uplifted to their present height. This idea, ho^'- 

 ever sta:"tling it may at first appear, is quite in accordance, as h; ./re 

 stated, wilt the analogy of changes now going on in certain regions of 

 the globe, 'ihus, in parts of Sweden, and the shores and islands of the 

 Gulf of Bothnia, proofs have been obtained that the land is experiencing, 

 and has experienced for centuries, a slow upheaving movement. Play- 

 fair argued in favor of this opinion in 1802 ; and in 1807, Von Buch, 

 after his travels in Scandinavia, announced his conviction that a rising 

 of the land was in progi-ess. Celsius and other Swedish writers had, 



