rose about two feet, and a cape in the neighbourhood nearly ten feet. Sometimes the ground so elevated is, after a shorter or longer period, again depressed to its former level. A good example of this occurred in South America in 1835. The shore at Concepcion was raised a yard and a half; and the Isle Santa Maria was pushed up two and a half yards at one end, and three and a half yards at the other. But only a few months afterwards the ground sank again, and everything returned to its old position. The heaving and undulatory motion of an earthquake produces frequently considerable changes at the surface of the ground, besides an alteration of level. Rocks are loosened, and sometimes hurled down from cliff and mountain-side, and streams are occasionally dammed with the soil and rubbish pitched into them. Sometimes also the ground opens, and swallows whatever chances to come in the way. If these chasms close again permanently, no change in the physiography of the land may take place, but sometimes they remain open, and affect the drainage of the country. 79. _Movements of Upheaval and Depression._--Besides the permanent alteration of level which is sometimes the result of a great earthquake, it is now well known that the crust of the earth is subject to long-continued and tranquil movements of elevation and depression. The cause of these movements is at present merely matter for speculation, some being of opinion that they may be caused by the gradual contraction of the slowly cooling nucleus of the earth, which would necessarily give rise to depression, while this movement, again, would be accompanied by some degree of elevation--the result of the lateral push or thrust effected by the descending rock-masses. It is doubtful, however, if this hypothesis will explain all the appearances. The Scandinavian peninsula affords a fine example of the movements in question. At the extremity of the peninsula (Scania), the land is slowly sinking, while to the north of that district gradual elevation is taking place at a very variable rate, which in some places reaches as much as two or three feet in a century. Movements of elevation are also affecting Spitzbergen, Northern Siberia, North Greenland, the whole western borders of South America, Japan, the Kurile Islands, Asia Minor, and many other districts in the Mediterranean area, besides various islets in the great Pacific Ocean. The proofs of a slow movement of elevation are found in old _sea-beaches_ and _sea-caves_, which now stand above the level of the sea. In the case of Scandinavia, it has been noticed that the pine-woods which clothe the mountains are being slowly elevated to ungenial heights, and are therefore gradually dying out along their upper limits. The proofs of depression of the land are seen in submerged forests and peat, which occur frequently around our own shores, and there is also strong human testimony to such downward movements of the surface. The