No observed geographical changes in historical times entitle us to assume that where upheaval may be in progress it proceeds at a rapid rate. Three or four feet rather than as many yards in a century may probably be as much as we can reckon upon in our speculations; and if such be the case, the continuance of the upward movement might easily be counteracted by the denuding force of such currents aided by such waves as, during a gale, are known to prevail in the German Ocean. What parts of the bed of the ocean are stationary at present, and what areas may be rising or sinking, is a matter of which we are very ignorant, as the taking of accurate soundings is but of recent date. _Newfoundland Bank._—The great bank of Newfoundland may be compared in size to the whole of England. This part of the bottom of the Atlantic is surrounded on three sides by a rapidly deepening ocean, the bank itself being from twenty to fifty fathoms (or from 120 to 300 feet) under water. We are unable to determine by the comparison of different charts made at distant periods, whether it is undergoing any change of level, but if it be gradually rising we cannot anticipate on that account that it will become land, because the breakers in an open sea would exercise a prodigious force even on solid rock brought up to within a few yards of the surface. We know, for example, that when a new volcanic island rose in the Mediterranean in 1831, the waves were capable in a few years of reducing it to a sunken rock.