Early in the last century the Swedish naturalist Celsius collected numerous observations, all pointing to the fact of a slow elevation of the land. Rocks both on the shore of the Baltic and the German Ocean, known to have been once sunken reefs, were in his time above water; small islands in the Gulf of Bothnia had been joined to the continent, and old fishing grounds deserted, as being too shallow or entirely dried up. These changes of level, which he estimated at about three feet in a century, Celsius attributed to a sinking of the waters of the Baltic, owing possibly to the channel, by which it discharges its surplus waters into the Atlantic, having been gradually widened and deepened by the waves and currents. But the lowering of level would in that case have been uniform and universal over that inland sea, and the waters could not have sunk at Torneo while they retained their former level at Copenhagen, Wismar, Stralsund, and other towns which are now as close to the water’s edge as at the time of their foundation. Playfair (1802) and Leopold von Buch (1807) first attributed the change of level to the slow and insensible rising of the land, and the subsequent investigations of Sir Charles Lyell in 1834 have placed the fact beyond a doubt. The attention of geologists having once been directed to the partial upheaval of the Scandinavian peninsula, similar facts were soon pointed out in other countries. At Bourgneuf, near La Rochelle, the remains of a ship wrecked on an oyster bank in the year 1752, now lie in a cultivated field, fifteen feet above the level of the sea; and, within a period of twenty-five years the parish has gained at least 1,500 acres, a very acceptable gift of the subterranean plutonic power. Port Bahaud, where formerly the Dutchmen used to take in cargoes of salt, is now 9,000 feet from the sea, and the Island of Olonne is at present surrounded only by swamps and meadows. These and similar phenomena, such as the constant rise of the chalk cliffs at Marennes, cannot possibly be explained by recent driftings, but evidently proceed from a slow upheaval of the coasts and the adjacent sea-bed. On the opposite shores of the Atlantic, we find Newfoundland undergoing a similar process of elevation; for cliffs over which, thirty or forty years ago, schooners used to sail with perfect safety, are now quite close to the surface; and in the Pacific the depth of the channel leading to the port of Honolulu is gradually decreasing from the same cause. While many coasts thus show signs of progressive elevation, others afford no less striking proofs of subsidence, frequently in close proximity to regions of upheaval.