128 Scientific Intelligence. 



same time the eastern portion of Candia (an island about 200 miles long,) 

 has sunk many feet, causing the ruins of several Greek towns to be 

 visible under water. Looking beyond the limits of the Mediterranean, 

 the buried Hindoo temple of Avantipura in Cashmere, with its 74 pillars, 

 described by Dr. Thomson and Major Cunningham, were mentioned, and 

 how their envelopment in lacustrine silt, at some period after the year 850 

 of our era, had caused them and their statues to escape the fury of the 

 Mahometan conqueror Sicander, who bore the name of the idol breaker. 

 (Principles of Geology, 9th ed., p. 762.) The gradual subsidence of the 

 coast of Greenland, and the elevation of a large part of Sweden, century 

 after century, were also instanced ; and lastly, the latest event of the 

 kind, yielding to no other in the magnitude of its geological and geo- 

 graphical importance, the earthquake of New Zealand, of January 23d, 

 1855. The shocks of this convulsion extended over an area of land and 

 sea three times as large as the British Isles ; after it had ceased, it was 

 found that a tract of land, in the immediate vicinity of Wellington, com- 

 prising 4600 square miles, or nearly equal to Yorkshire in dimensions, 

 had been upraised from one to nine feet, and a range of hills, consisting 

 of older rocks, uplifted vertically, while the tertiary plains to the east of it 

 remained unmoved ; so that a precipice, nine feet in perpendicular height 

 was produced, and is even said to be traceable for 90 miles inland, from 

 north to south bordering the plain of the Wairarapa. In consequence of 

 a rise of five feet of the land on the north side of Cook's Strait, near 

 Wellington and Port Nicholson, the tide had been almost excluded from 

 the river Hutt, while on the south side of the same straits in the Middle 

 Island, where the ground has sunk about five feet, the tide now flows 

 several miles further up the river Wairau than before the earthquake.* 



* Some memoranda respecting the changes in physical geography, effected during 

 the earthquake of January 23d, 1855, will be found in the Appendix of a new 

 work by the Rev. Richard Taylor, entitled " New Zealand and its Inhabitants," Lon- 

 don, 1855. These were furnished by Mr. Edward Roberts, of the Royal Engineer 

 Department, who has since (March, 1856), on his return to London, communicated 

 other particulars to Sir C. Lyell. Mr. Walter Mantell, also now in London, and 

 who was in Wellington (New Zealand) during the shocks of last year, besides con- 

 firming the statements of Mr. Roberts, has supplied valuable information respecting 

 the geological structure of the country upraised or depressed during the catastro- 

 phe. The upheaval around Wellington was only from one and a half to four feet, 

 but went on increasing gradually to Muka Muka Point, 12 miles distant, in a direct 

 line to the southeast, where it reached its maximum, amounting to nine feet, and 

 beyond, or eastward of which, there was no movement. Mr. Roberts was enabled 

 to make these measurements with accuracy, as a white zone of rock, covered with 

 nullipores just below the level of low tide, was upraised. 



The perpendicular cliff, at the point above mentioned, formed part of the sea- 

 ward termination of the Rimutaka chain of hills, which consist of argillite (not 

 slaty), of ancient geological date. Their eastern escarpment faces a low country, 

 consisting of very modern tertiary strata, which also terminate when they reach the 

 sea in a cliff, 80 feet high, and considerably lower than that formed by the older 

 rocks. This tertiary cliff remained absolutely unmoved, the junction of the older 

 and newer rocks constituting a line of fault, running north and south, for a great 

 distance (according to a resident, 90 miles,) inland along the base of the hills, where 

 rising abruptly they bound the low tertiary plains. A fissure open in part of its 

 course, and in which some cattle were engulphed in 1855, marks the line of fault in 

 many places. 



Among other proofs of subsidence experienced on the opposite side of Cook's 

 Straits, or in the northern part of the Middle Island, contemporaneously with the 



