pothesis that the land was rising in
Sweden--Opinion of Von Buch--Marks cut on the rocks--Survey of these
in 1820--Facility of detecting slight alterations of level on coast
of Sweden--Shores of the ocean also rising--Area upheaved--Shelly
deposits of Uddevalla--Of Stockholm, containing fossil shells
characteristic of the Baltic--Subsidence in south of Sweden--Fishing
hut buried under marine strata--Upheaval in Sweden not always in
horizontal planes--Sinking of land in Greenland--Bearing of these
facts on geology.

We have now considered the phenomena of volcanoes and earthquakes
according to the division of the subject before proposed (p. 345), and
have next to turn our attention to those slow and insensible changes in
the relative level of land and sea which take place in countries remote
from volcanoes, and where no violent earthquakes have occurred within
the period of human observation. Early in the last century the Swedish
naturalist, Celsius, expressed his opinion that the waters, both of the
Baltic and Northern Ocean, were gradually subsiding. From numerous
observations, he inferred that the rate of depression was about fifty
Swedish inches in a century.[728] In support of this position, he
alleged that there were many rocks both on the shores of the Baltic and
the ocean known to have been once sunken reefs, and dangerous to
navigators, but which were in his time above water--that the waters of
the Gulf of Bothnia had been gradually converted into land, several
ancient ports having been changed into inland cities, small islands
joined to the continent, and old fishing-grounds deserted as being too
shallow, or entirely dried up. Celsius also maintained, that the
evidence of the change rested not only on modern observations, but on
the authority of the ancient geographers, who had stated that
Scandinavia was formerly an island. This island, he argued, must in the
course of centuries, by the gradual retreat of the sea, have become
connected with the continent; an event which he supposed to have
happened after the time of Pliny, and before the ninth century of our
era.

To this argument it was objected that the ancients were so ignorant of
the geography of the most northern parts of Europe, that their authority
was entitled to no weight; and that their representation of Scandinavia
as an island, might with more propriety be adduced to prove the
scantiness of their information, tha