Page:Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Volume 1.djvu/377

364 on the 'Rise of Land in Sweden.' The account of Linnæus's journey was published (in Swedish) in 1747. The descriptions and figures of the Uddevalla fossils there given, appear to have escaped the notice of most subsequent writers. Professor Jameson, when noticing Mr. Lyell's paper in the 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal,' briefly directed attention to the observations of Linnæus. As they have not been referred to in any geological work with which I am acquainted, and as, from the accuracy of the information they contain, they must be regarded as among the most valuable of the published notes on the organic remains of the northern drift, as well as most interesting, on account of the time of their publication, and the man who recorded them, I avail myself of the kindness of my distinguished friend, Dr. R. G. Latham, to present a translation of the passage in the 'Wast-Gota Resa.'

"The shell hills (Skalbargen) are rightly reckoned amongst the greatest wonders of Bohuslaen; for they lie inland nearly a whole quarter of a mile, in some places, from the sea. These shell hills consist of periwinkles and bivalve shells (Snacke-och Muskle-skal), which are here assembled in such numbers, that one wonders how so many living beings existed on the earth. We visited Capell Hill, which lay a quarter of a mile beyond the southern Uddevalla Gate: then we went to Sammered, which lay nearly a quarter of a mile from the town, N.E. In both places were these shell-hills, especially and most markedly at Sammered. Here there were bare and hillocky ridges of gray stone, which, on the sides that front the town or the sea, where the bay was originally, bent in. The earth was slightly convex on the summits of the above-named hill, and made a curve; where the black mould, which was seldom more than a foot or a foot and a half deep, thinned off, the shell bed, which was two or three fathoms deep, underlaid it Under this came in succession pure clay. No shells were seen above this stratum among the bare hill ridges. They stretched, however, altogether from the hill downwards under the black mould, often to the breadth of several gunshots. The shells lay clean and unchanged, with no addition of soil, only strewn over with a little gravel, such as is thrown up on the beaches. I sought carefully for all the sorts of shell fish that were found here, in order that I might determine from what world they came, or if the sea, even as the land, had changed its inhabitants."

Linnæus then gives an enumeration of the species he found there, and figures the most remarkable. He notices the following: 1st. "Lepas quæ Balanus Uddevallensis."—Tab. v. fig. 1. This is our Balanus scoticus.

2nd. "Concha oblonga obtusa, sulcis transversis."—Tab. v. fig. 2. This is the large variety of the Saxicava rugosa, or Saxicava sulcata.