Such inequality in the rate of rising or sinking, when we contemplate large continental spaces, is quite consistent with what we know of the course of nature in our own times as well as at remote geological epochs. Thus in Sweden, as before stated, the rise of land now in progress is nearly uniform as we proceed from north to south for moderate distances; but it greatly diminishes southwards if we compare areas hundreds of miles apart; so that instead of the land rising about 5 feet in a hundred years as at the North Cape, it becomes less than the same number of inches at Stockholm, and farther south the land is stationary, or, if not, seems rather to be descending than ascending.* (* "Principles of Geology" chapter 30 9th edition page 519 et seq.) To cite an example of high geological antiquity, M. Hebert has demonstrated that, during the Oolitic and Cretaceous periods, similar inequalities in the vertical movements of the earth's crust took place in Switzerland and France. By his own observations and those of M. Lory he has proved that the area of the Alps was rising and emerging from beneath the ocean towards the close of the Oolitic epoch, and was above water at the commencement of the Cretaceous era; while, on the other hand, the area of the Jura, about 100 miles to the north, was slowly sinking at the close of the Oolitic period, and had become submerged at the commencement of the Cretaceous. Yet these oscillations of level were accomplished without any perceptible derangement in the strata, which remained all the while horizontal, so that the Lower Cretaceous or Neocomian beds were deposited conformably on the Oolitic.* (* "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France" 2 series volume 16 1859 page 596.)