538 
FORMER SUBMARINE CONDITION OF RUSSIA. 
streams diverging from the elevated chain and distributing these materials in the 
trainees which have been described. The next process which followed in Russia 
and Prussia was the desiccation of the submarine low tracts by their final elevation 
from beneath the sea. Now if this upheaval had been violent, like that of the 
strata in many parts of the British Isles and in other parts of Europe, where beds 
containing marine shells occur at very different altitudes 1 within very limited di- 
stances, and the subjacent strata are dislocated, contorted and sometimes reversed, 
similar results would have followed, and the drift would have been thrown off on 
the flanks of each protruded band of rocks and deposited on its sides or in hollows, 
in the manner we have alluded to. Such, however, was not the mode in which 
those vast low countries of the north-east were raised from beneath the sea. Their 
ascent was accomplished, on the contrary, without any violent fractures or dismem- 
berments of the subjacent rocks, and simply by an equable elevation “ en masse 
and hence the detrital matter, as well as the surface of the subsoil on which it rests, 
are necessarily, we believe, presented to us with very much the same aspect as 
when they lay beneath the sea. But even if considerable violence had been used 
in this operation (and we can conceive no phenomenon of such an extent without 
great degradation) , still from its very nature, the subsoil of Russia, void as it is of 
all crystalline character, and for the most part incoherent and soft, can never have 
been in a condition to exhibit on its surface any of those striated appearances 
which in lofty and alpine regions have been produced by the friction of glaciers, 
and which in the low and gnarled promontories of the south of Ireland and Swe- 
den, as well as in many parts of France, Scotland and England, to some of which 
we shall presently advert, have, as we think, unquestionably resulted from the 
friction of incumbent masses of local and moistened drift. 
We must here meet an objection which may be made to our views of a sub- 
marine condition of the surface of Russia at the period of transport. It may be 
said, that marine remains have not been found in the Russian detritus. We not 
only, however, appeal to England, where such sea-shells and distant blocks are 
found together, but also to Denmark, where the drift, full of large northern 
boulders, is, in fact, a portion of the great transported masses in question, and has 
been shown by Prof. Forchhammer, Dr. Beck and Mr. Lyell to contain quasi- 
modern sea-shells ; and we have ourselves shown, that similar shells exist beneath 
the drift in the north-eastern extremity of Russia. Knowing how long a period 
1 See Silurian System, p. 534. 
