rounded protuberance, a few feet or yards in
diameter; and a single sea-gull often appropriates to itself this
resting-place, resorting there to devour its prey. Similar points, in
the mean time, have grown to long reefs, and are constantly whitened by
a multitude of sea-fowl; while others have been changed from a reef,
annually submerged, to a small islet, on which a few lichens, a
fir-seedling, and a few blades of grass, attest that the shoal has at
length been fairly changed into dry land. Thousands of wooded islands
around show the great alterations which time can work. In the course of
centuries also, the spaces intervening between the existing islands may
be laid dry, and become grassy plains encircled by heights well clothed
with lofty firs. This last step of the process, by which long fiords and
narrow channels, once separating wooded islands, are deserted by the
sea, has been exemplified within the memory of living witnesses on
several parts of the coast.

Had the apparent fall of the waters been observed in the Baltic only, we
might have endeavored to explain the phenomenon by local causes
affecting that sea alone. For instance, the channel by which the Baltic
discharges its surplus waters into the Atlantic, might be supposed to
have been gradually widened and deepened by the waves and currents, in
which case a fall of the water like that before alluded to in Lake
Maeler, might have occurred. But the lowering of level would in that
case have been uniform and universal, and the waters could not have sunk
at Torneo, while they retained their former level at Copenhagen. Such an
explanation is also untenable on other grounds; for it is a fact, as
Celsius long ago affirmed, that the alteration of level extends to the
western shores of Sweden, bordering the ocean. The signs of elevation
observed between Uddevalla and Gothenburg are as well established as
those on the shores of the Bothnian Gulf. Among the places where they
may be studied, are the islands of Marstrand and Gulholmen, the
last-mentioned locality being one of those particularly pointed out by
Celsius.

The inhabitants there and elsewhere affirm, that the rate of the sinking
of the sea (or elevation of land) varies in different and adjoining
districts, being greatest at points where the land is low. But in this
they are deceived; for they measure the amount of rise by the area
gained, which is most considerable where the land descends with a gentle
sl