LAND RAISED, NOT THE SEA LOWERED. 
11 
ena without admitting any movement of the land itself, we 
are required to imagine several retreats and returns of the 
ocean; and even then our theory applies merely to cases 
where the marine strata composing the dry land are hori¬ 
zontal, leaving unexplained those more common instances 
where strata are inclined, curved, or placed on their edges, 
and evidently not in the position in which they were first 
deposited. 
Geologists, therefore, were at last compelled to have re¬ 
course to the doctrine that the solid land has been repeat¬ 
edly moved upward or downward, so as permanently to 
change its position relatively to the sea. There are several 
distinct grounds for preferring this conclusion. First, it 
will account equally for the position of those elevated mass¬ 
es of marine origin in which the stratification remains hori¬ 
zontal, and for those in which the strata are disturbed, 
broken, inclined, or vertical. Secondly, it is consistent with 
human experience that land should rise gradually in some 
places and be depressed in others. Such changes have act¬ 
ually occurred in our own days, and are now in progress, 
having been accompanied in some cases by violent convul¬ 
sions, while in others they have proceeded so insensibly as 
to have been ascertainable only by the most careful scien¬ 
tific observations, made at considerable intervals of time. 
On the other hand, there is no evidence from human experi¬ 
ence of a rising or lowering of the sea’s level in any region, 
and the ocean can not be raised or depressed in one place 
without its level being changed all over the globe. 
These preliminary remarks will prepare the reader to un¬ 
derstand the great theoretical interest attached to all facts 
connected with the position of strata, whether horizontal or 
inclined, curved or vertical. 
Now the first and most simple appearance is where strata 
of marine origin occur above the level of the sea in horizon¬ 
tal position. Such are the strata which we meet with in the 
south of Sicily, filled with shells for the most part of the 
same species as those now living in the Mediterranean. 
Some of these rocks rise to the height of more than 2000 
feet above the sea. Other mountain masses might be men¬ 
tioned, composed of horizontal strata of high antiquity, 
which contain fossil remains of animals wholly dissimilar 
from any now known to exist. In the south of Sweden, for 
example, near Lake Wener, the beds of some of the oldest 
fossiliferous deposits, called Silurian and Cambrian by geol¬ 
ogists, occur in as level a position as if they had recently 
formed part-of the delta of a great river, and been left dry 
