Similar observations show that nearly the whole of Scandinavia is slowly rising out of the sea. At the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia the land is emerging at the rate of five feet, three inches, in a century; but by the side of the Aland Isles it only rises three and one quarter feet in the same time. South of this archipelago it rises still more slowly; and farther down, the line of shore does not alter as compared with the level of the sea. But it is a curious fact that the extreme southern end of this peninsula is subsiding, as proved by the forests that have been submerged. Several streets of some towns there have already disappeared, and the coast has lost on the average a belt of land thirty-two yards in breadth. The upward movement of the Scandinavian peninsula must have been going on for a long time, if we assume that it was always at the same rate as at present; for we find beds of seashells of living species at heights of six or seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. Great dead branches of a certain pink coral, found in the sea at a depth of over one hundred and fifty to three hundred fathoms, are now seen in water only ten or fifteen fathoms deep. It must have been killed as it was brought up into the upper and warmer layers of water. This is striking testimony. The pine woods too, which clothe the hills, are continually being upheaved towards the lower limit of snow, and are gradually withering away in the cooler atmosphere; and wide belts of forest are composed of nothing but dead trees, although some of them have stood for centuries. Geologists have proved that the Baltic Sea formerly communicated by a wide channel with the North Sea, the deepest depressions of which are now occupied by lakes in the southern part of Sweden; for considerable heaps of oyster-shells are now found in several places on the heights commanding these great lakes. Then we have in Denmark the celebrated "kitchen-middens," heaps of rubbish also largely composed of oyster-shells which the inhabitants, in the "Stone Age," collected from the bottoms of the neighbouring bays. At the present day the waters of the Baltic, into which rivers bring large quantities of fresh water, do not contain enough salt for oysters to grow there; but the oyster-shells prove that the Baltic Sea and these inland lakes were once as salt as the North Sea is now. This can only be explained by supposing that the Baltic was not so shut in then as it is in these days. The bed of the old wide channel has risen, and what once was sea is now land. Again, it is very probable that the great lakes and innumerable sheets of water which fill all the granite basins of Finland have taken the place of an arm of the sea which once united the waters of the Baltic to those of the great Polar Ocean. And so there must have been upheaval here as well.