CHANGES IN THE EARTH’S SURFACE

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2228, 19 April 1881, Page 2

CHANGES IN THE EARTH’S SURFACE

The change* in level of the earth’s surface, which must have been very rapid and vast in the early geological ages, are yet in progress. Aside from paroxysmal changes, such as the volcanic upheaval of an island now and then, great areas of land 'in different parts of the globe are undergoing a slow process of elevation or subsidence. In Greenland a subsidence is taking place. For 600 miles, from Disco Bay to the Firth of Igalibo, the coast has been sinking for four centuries past. Old buildings and islands have been submerged, and the Moravian settlers have had to put down new polos for their boats, the old ones standing, Lyell observes, “ as silent witnesses of the change.” On the North American coast, south of Greenland, from Labrador to New Jersey, it is supposed that similar changes are going on. G. H. Cook ooncludes that a slow subsidence is progressing along the coasts of New Jersey, Long Island, and Martha’s Vineyard, and, according to A. Gesnor, the land is rising at St. John, in New Brunswick ; sinking at the island of Grand Menan ; rising on the coast opposite, at Bathurst; sinking about the Bay of Fundy, whore there are regions of stumps submerged thirty-five feet at high tide, and rising at Prince Edward’s Island. It is believed that in the Pacific Ocean the Coral Islands have, in some portions, sunk not less than 6000 feet during comparatively recent geologic times. Surveys made in Northern Sweden have shown, according to Lyell, that the coast at that point is rising at the rate of about four feet in a century.