“It would be unnecessary to mention even the two inconsiderable facts above, if the _depression_ of the _level_ of the seas were indeed a matter of certainty; for the best authenticated and the least equivocal monuments of their change would then abound along all their coasts. But proofs are every where found that such a change is chimerical: they may be seen in all the vales coming down to these seas, in which there is no perceptible impression of the action of any waters but those of the land, and no vestige, through their whole extent, of any permanent abode of those of the sea; and proofs to the same effect are equally visible, along the coasts of both these seas, in all the new lands which have been formed on them, and which, being perfectly horizontal from the point where their formation commenced, evidently show that the water displaced by them has been constantly at the same level. Hence appears the necessity of multiplying, as I have done, and shall continue to do, for the subversion of a prejudice of such ancient date, the examples of these peremptory proofs of its total want of foundation. The rock mentioned by Celsius had probably been observed by him at times when the level of the sea was different; its known differences much exceeding the quantity here specified. As for the inscription near Aspo, in a country abounding with lakes as much as that which I have above described, if we are acquainted with its terms, we should probably find it to be, like many which I have seen in various places along the course of the Oder and the Elbe, the monument of some extraordinary inundation of the land, from the sudden melting of the snows in the mountains, at a time when the water had been prevented from running off by an equally extraordinary rise of the level of the sea; of which the effects on low coasts may extend very far inland. “By this conclusion, however, from these few facts, contrary to every thing observed on the coasts of this sea, Mr Playfair thinks himself authorised to maintain, that the gradual depression, not only of the Baltic, but of the whole northern ocean, is a matter of certainty; afterwards he examines merely which of these two causes, the subsidence of the sea itself, or the elevation of the land around it, agrees the best with the phenomena; and he decides in favour of the latter, pointing out its accordance with the Huttonian Theory.” NOTE L, p. 119. FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.