From old bench marks and records of lake levels it has been
estimated that the rate of warping amounts to five inches a
century for every one hundred miles. It is calculated that the
water of Lake Michigan is rising at Chicago at the rate of nine or
ten inches per century. The divide at this point between the
tributaries of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan is but eight feet
above the mean stage of the lake. If the canting of the region
continues at its present rate, in a thousand years the waters of
the lake will here overflow the divide. In three thousand five
hundred years all the lakes except Ontario will discharge by this
outlet, via the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, into the Gulf of
Mexico. The present outlet by the Niagara River will be left dry,
and the divide between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi
systems will have shifted from Chicago to the vicinity of Buffalo.
PHYSIOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF OSCILLATIONS. We have already mentioned
several of the most important effects of movements of elevation
and depression, such as their effects on rivers, the mantle of
waste, and the forms of coasts. Movements of elevation--including
uplifts by folding and fracture of the crust to be noticed later--
are the necessary conditions for erosion by whatever agent. They
determine the various agencies which are to be chiefly concerned m
the wear of any land,--whether streams or glaciers, weathering or
the wind,--and the degree of their efficiency. The lands must be
uplifted before they can be eroded, and since they must be eroded
before their waste can be deposited, movements of elevation are a
prerequisite condition for sedimentation also. Subsidence is a
necessary condition for deposits of great thickness, such as those
of the Great Valley of California and the Indo-Gangetic plain (p.
101), the Mississippi delta (p. 109), and the still more important
formations of the continental delta in gradually sinking troughs
(p. 183). It is not too much to say that the character and
thickness of each formation of the stratified rocks depend
primarily on these crustal movements.
Along the Baltic coast of Sweden, bench marks show that the sea is
withdrawing from the land at a rate which at the north amounts to
between three and four feet per century; Towards the south the
rate decreases. South of Stockholm, until recent years, the sea
has gained upon the land, and here in several seaboard towns
streets by the shore are still submerged. The rate of oscillation
increases also from the coast inland. On the other hand, along the
German coast of the Baltic the only historic fluctuations of sea
level are those which may be accounted for by variations due to
changes in rainfall. In 1730 Celsius explained the changes of
level of the Swedish coast as due to a lowering of the Baltic
instead of to an elevation of the land. Are the facts just stated
consistent with his theory?
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