PART I. CHAPTER V. 



63 



Elevation of Land. 



cover them, we suppose them to have constituted the ancient bed 

 of the ocean, and that they were gradually uphfted to their pre- 

 sent height. This idea, however startHng it may at first appear, 

 is quite in accordance, as above stated, with the analogy of 

 changes now going on in certain regions of the globe. Thus in 

 parts of Sweden, for example, and the shores and islands of the 

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

 periencing, and has experienced for centuries, a slow upheaving 

 movement. Play fair argued in favour of this opinion in 1802, 

 and in 1807 Von Buch, after his travels in Scandinavia, an- 

 nounced his conviction that a rising of the land was in progress. 

 Celsius and other Swedish writers had, a century before, declared 

 their belief that a gradual change had for ages been taking place 

 in the relative level of land and sea. They attributed the change 

 to a fall of the waters both of the ocean and the Baltic ; but this 

 theory has now been refuted by abundant evidence ; for the alter- 

 ation of relative level has neither been universal nor every where 

 uniform in quantity, but has amounted in some regions to seve- 

 ral feet in a century, in others to a few inches, while in the 

 southernmost part of Sweden, or the province of Scania, there 

 has been actually a loss instead of a gain of land, buildings hav- 

 ing gradually sunk below the level of the sea.* 



It appears from the observations of 'Mr. Darwin and others that 

 very extensive regions of the continent of South America have 

 been undergoing slow and gradual upheaval, by which the level 

 plains of Patagonia, covered with recent marine shells, and the 

 Pampas of Buenos Ayres have been formed.f On the other 

 hand the gradual sinking of part of the west coast of Greenland, 

 for the space of more than 600 miles from north to south, during 

 the last four centuries, has been established by the observations 

 of a Danish naturalist. Dr. Pingel. And while these proofs of 

 continental elevation and subsidence by slow and insensible move- 

 ments have been recently brought to light, the evidence is daily 

 strengthened of continued changes of level effected by violent 

 convulsions in countries where earthquakes are frequent. Here 

 the rocks are rent from time to time, and heaved up or thrown 

 down several feet at once, and disturbed in such a manner, that 

 the original position of strata may, in the course of centuries, be 

 modified to any amount. 



* In the first three editions of my Principles of Geology, I expressed many 

 doubts as to thevalidity of the alleged proofs of a gradual rise of land in Sweden ; 

 but after visiting that country in 1834 1 retracted these objections, and published 

 a detailed statement of the observations which led me to alter my opinion in the 

 Phil. Trans. 1835, Part I. See also Principles, 5th edition, [1st. Am. Edit.] book 

 ii. chap. 17. 



t See his Journal in Voyage of the Beagle. 



