280 GRADUAL AND PERMANENT RISE OF A LARGE TRACT OF LAND. 
America, he immediately called to mind a 
species offish (the Lepidosteus), now existing, 
which has, in many points, a striking resem- 
blance to the lizard tribe. The form of its 
scales particularly, as well as of its teeth, are 
extremely similar to those of the crocodile 
genus; and even its internal organization 
forms a sort of connecting link between that of 
a fish and a lizard. The swimming-bladder, 
when minutely examined, is found to be, ana- 
tomically, a true Lung-, and approaches closely 
in structure to the lungs of reptiles. It has 
a regular trachea, communicating with a 
glottis, surrounded by ligaments intended to 
open and shut it, constituting an apparatus 
even of a more complicated structure than 
that of many reptiles. 'I'he heart, again, re- 
sembles that of a reptile in some particulars. 
With this fish M. Agassiz compared the 
sauroid remains (as they had been provision- 
ally termed,) tound at Burdie-house : he was 
materially assisted, also, in making out the 
analogy, by the entire head of a large fossil fish 
in the museum at Leeds. By this sort of 
comparison, he has at length classified the 
fossil remains into a new genus, under the 
name ol JMegalicthys; of which more than 
one species are now recognised in the coal- 
fields of Scotland. 
These investigations were given in a paper, 
read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, by 
Dr. Hibbert (Dec. 1834), who, in conclu- 
sion, well observed the importance, in 
geology, of such analogies with living species. 
In this instance, he observed," M. Agassiz 
had rescued from obscurity a sauroid fish, 
dwelling among the lakes and rivers of the 
most thermal regions of America, and ren- 
dered it elucidative of one of the most earliest 
states ol our planet, when, in the language of 
this naturalist, fish united, in their particular 
organization, the character of reptiles, be- 
longing to that class of animals which only 
appeared in far greater numbers during a 
later epoch.’’ 
ELEVATION AND SUBSIDENCE OF 
LAND. 
A paper was read to the Geological Society, 
November l8, 1835, in which Dr. Pingel, of 
Copenhagen, gives a detailed description of 
the evidences which he has collected in a 
tour, of the fact of a subsidence, during the 
last half century, of the coait of Green- 
larid, between N. lat. GO® and 69«. 'I bis is 
evinced by the ruins of houses and villages on 
the shore, vyhich are now covered at high 
water, and, in some instances, are only visible 
at very low tides. 
From astatement, by Captain Fitzroy, R. 
N-, read at the same meeting, it appears that 
the earthquake ofFebruary, 1835, on the coast 
of Chili, not only produced an alteration 
in the currents but that the island of S. Maria 
was permanently elevated ten feet. Another, 
and more detailed, account ofthe same earth- 
quake, was given in a letter from Mr. Alison. 
I he most remarkable circumstances were 
these : Forty minutesafter the first shock, the 
sea suddenly retired so far, thata great part of 
the bottom of the bay, at the port of Talca- 
huno, was laid dry ; but the water very soon 
afterwards returned with increased violence^ 
and flowed twenty feet over the town, carry- 
ing everything before it. This was repeated 
three times. The same thing occurred in the 
earthquake which destroyed Pence, in 1730 
and 1731. In the present instance, the land 
permanently rose two or three feet on the shore 
andinthebay. Mr. Alison also mentions the 
existence, near Valparaiso, of recent marine 
shells, 1400 feet above the level of the sea ; 
and, in the bay of Valparaiso, he says, a rock, 
which, in 1817, could be passed over in a 
bout, is now dry except at spring-tides. 
At the island of Juan Fernandez, a similar 
recession, and then violent influx of the sea 
took place; but here it was accompanied by 
another remarkable phenomenon, namely, the 
breaking out of a submarine volcano, which 
caused an immense agitation and boiling or 
the sea. 
At a meeting, of December 2nd, a paper was 
read on the effects of earthquake waves on 
the coasts of the Pacific, by Woodbine 
Parish, Esq. In this valuable memoir, the 
author has collected all the information he 
could obtain from well-authenticated histori- 
cal accounts of earthquakes, producing those 
sudden overflowings, or rather immense 
vyaves, in the sea of which we have just spoken. 
These are highly curious, and attest the vast 
force with which inroads of the ocean, under 
these circumstances, have taken place. They 
by no means u/rr;ai/s accompany earthquakes : 
in fact it evidently depends on the direction 
which the shock takes, and the locality of its 
origin, w'hether such an effect will be pro- 
duced or not. 
A most remarkable and instructive example 
of the gradual and permanent rise of a large 
tract of land, is that described by Mr, Lyell 
as now taking place in Sweden. (PMl, 
Trans., 1835, i.) 
It is more than a hundred years since the 
Swedish naturalist, Celsius, declared his opi- 
nion that the level of the waters, both of the 
Baltic and the ocean, was suffering a gradual 
depression ; that is, that there was a change 
in the relative level of the land and the sea. 
Von Buch, in the course of his tour in 
Sweden and Norway, about twenty-five years 
ago, found, at several places on the western 
shores of Scandinavia, deposits of sand and 
mud, containing numerous shells referrible to 
species now living in the neighbouring ocean. 
From this circumstance, and from accounts 
which he received from inhabitants of the 
coasts of the Bothnian Gulf, he inferred that 
Celsius was correct in regard to a gradual 
change of relative level. As the sea cannot 
sink in one place without falling everywhere, 
^mn Buch concluded that certain parts of 
Sweden and Finland were slowly and insensi- 
bly rising. 
Some difference of opinion, however, pre- 
vailed on the subject ; and there were not 
wanting able observers, who contended that 
the inferences were founded on mistaken 
data, and, on other grounds, denied the truth 
of the statement altogether. The question 
