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surface, under gravel containing marine shells of living 
species. Near Peterborough there is a deposit of estuarine 
gravel, containing, in alternate layers, fresh- water and sea 
shells, occupying a position about twenty-five feet above the 
sea. In Gloucestershire, near Cheltenham, there is an old 
sea-shore gravel-bed stretching to the base of the Cotteswold 
hills, and forming a level terrace, at an elevation of about 
forty feet. Higher up, on the flanks of the same range, there 
is a gravel-bed clinging to the sides of the hills, at an eleva- 
tion of about 600 feet ; and which, from its distinctly bedded 
arrangement, would appear to have been deposited in water 
at a time when the sea washed the base of the oolitic cliffs 
of the Cotteswold range. The two most marked raised 
beaches of the coast of Scotland (see plate) both contain 
marine shells. Those which are found in the twenty-five or 
thirty-feet beach, being all of recent species, and associated 
with works of art; while some of those in the forty-feet 
beach, the more ancient of the two, are of extinct species. In 
this latter beach no certain traces of human remains or works 
of art have yet been discovered. 
The shores and fiords of Scandinavia present some of the 
most interesting examples of raised beaches with which we 
are acquainted. Sir C. Lyell has shown that, near Stockholm, 
there occur, at slight elevations above the sea level, horizontal 
beds of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same peculiar 
assemblage of testacea, which now live in the brackish waters 
of the Baltic. Mingled with these, at different depths, various 
rude works of art, and vessels built before the introduction of 
iron, have been detected. The level of this beach is about 
sixty feet above the surface of the Baltic ; and in the same 
neighbourhood, at higher levels, more ancient beaches, with 
the same shells, but without any traces of the remains of man 
or his workmanship have been traced.* On the western coast, 
portions of raised beaches, containing shells of the species in- 
habiting the German Ocean, may be traced, lining the shores 
and winding along the sides of the deep inlets and fiords up 
to levels of 600 feet above the ocean. What renders these 
littoral phenomena of Scandinavia of unusual interest, is the 
fact that the land is not only actually rising, but that attempts 
have been made, with some success, to measure the rate of 
elevation, which, at the North Cape, is considered to be equal 
to five feet in a century. On the coast of Denmark, however, 
this rate, according to M. Puggaard is only equal to two or 
three inches in a century. 
The floors of caves, especially in limestone districts, are 
* Lyell : “ Principles of Geology ” and “ Antiquity of Man.” 
