I. The Bakerian Lecture. —On the proofs of a gradual rising of the land certain parts of Sweden

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It is now more than one hundred years since the Swedish naturalist Celsius expressed his opinion that the waters, not only of the Baltic, but of the whole Northern Ocean, were gradually sinking; and he represented their level as lowering at the rate of forty Swedish inches in a century. He observed that several rocks which not long ago were sunken reefs and dangerous to navigators, had become in his time above water; that the sea was constantly leaving dry new tracts of land along its borders; that ancient ports had become inland towns; and that old fishermen and seafaring people could testify that at a variety of places, both on the shores of the Baltic and the ocean, considerable changes had taken place within the time of their memory, in the form of the coast and depth of the sea. Lastly he appealed to marks which had been cut in the rocks before his time expressly to indicate the former level, and the waters were observed to have fallen below these marks. This notion of a change continually in progress in the relative level of land and sea was at first warmly controverted, and many facts were adduced to prove that there had not been a general fall of the waters even in the Baltic. It was supposed by many that there might have been some error in the observations, as the Baltic, though free from tides, is often raised for several days continuously two or three feet above its standard level by the melting of the snow, or by the prevalence of particular winds; and it was remarked that the altered form of the coast and the shallowing of the sea might be ascribed partly to new accessions of land at points where rivers entered, depositing sand and mud, and partly to the drifting of large blocks by ice, which are sometimes stranded and driven up on rocks and low islands so as to raise their height.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: