De Geer.j 
458 
[May iS, 
of the land, show at once that no local attraction of the land ice 
could have been sufficient to raise the water to any such amount, 
had the ice been many times as thick and extensive as it probably 
was even at its maximum. Such an explanation seems less possi- 
ble, as there could be very little room for any attracting land ice 
when the sea covered the parts of the land mentioned above. 
But as no local changes of the sea level can account for the phe- 
nomenon, so it is also impossible to explain it either by the general 
oscillations of the sea, perhaps from the one hemisphere to the 
other, produced by changes ip the situation of the center of grav- 
ity of the earth — according to the assumption of Adhemar and 
Croll — or by oscillations to and from the equator caused by 
changes in the rotation of the earth, as has been supposed by 
Swedenborg and Suess. If this theory were true, all the shore- 
lines would slope in a single direction, but as they in fact slope 
as well to the south as to the west, north, and east, it is evi- 
dent that the phenomenon must be explained by a real rising of 
the land. 
Moreover the region of upheaval is practically about the same as 
that of the last glaciation ; especially is it worthy of notice, that the 
maximum of both seems to have occupied about the same place. 
Still more remarkable is the coincidence of the uplifted area 
with the Scandinavian azoic region, or what Suess has called 
“the Baltic shield.” This comprises Sweden, Norway, Finland, 
and the Kola peninsula, or a well defined tract where the old 
rocks are laid bare by erosion and the surrounding lands thickly 
covered with younger sediment. The limit of the Baltic shield, 
where it has been directly observed, and perhaps everywhere, is 
marked by great faults. Now the isobase for zero, or the boun- 
dary for the uplifted area, seems all the way a little outside of the 
above named limit and follows very conspicuously its convexities 
and concavities. Likewise all the other isobases point to a close 
connection between the upheaval and the geological and to a cer- 
tain extent the topographical structure of the land. Thus it is 
commonly found that higher tracts have been raised more than 
lower ; and the basins of the great Swedish lakes, Wener and prob- 
ably also Wetter, have been less uplifted than their surround- 
ings, which might indicate that they were originally more de- 
pressed and very probably formed by unequal subsidence. 
The coincidence between the areas of erosion, glaciation, and 
