insertion in their Transactions, after the present date (May 13th, 1833,) and prior to the month of June in the year 1836. The Council also propose to give one of the Royal Medals in the year 1836 to the most important unpublished paper in Animal Physiology, communicated to the Royal Society for insertion in their Transactions, after the present date (May 13th, 1833,) and prior to the month of June in the year 1836. The Royal Medals for the year 1833 were awarded to SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL, K.H. F.R.S., for his Paper on the Investigation of the Orbits of Revolving Double Stars; and to PROFESSOR AUGUSTE PYRAME DE CANDOLLE, of Geneva, Foreign Member of the Royal Society, for his Discoveries and Investigations in Vegetable Physiology. Those for 1834 were awarded to JOHN WILLIAM LUBBOCK, Esq., V.P. & TREAS. R.S., for his Papers on the Tides published in the Philosophical Transactions; and to CHARLES LYELL, Esq., for his Work entitled "Principles of Geology." The Council propose to give one of the Royal Medals in the year 1837 to the most important unpublished paper in Physics, communicated to the Royal Society for insertion in their Transactions, after the present date (November 27th, 1834,) and prior to the month of June in that year. The Council also propose to give one of the Royal Medals in the year 1837 to the author of the best paper, to be entitled "Contributions towards a System of Geological Chronology founded on an examination of fossil remains, and their attendant phenomena," such paper to be communicated to the Royal Society after the present date (December 1st, 1834,) and prior to the month of June 1837. CONTENTS. III. Experimental Researches in Electricity.—Ninth Series. By MICHAEL FARADAY, D.C.L. F.R.S. Fullerian Prof. Chem. Royal Institution, Corr. Memb. Royal and Imp. Acadd. of Sciences, Paris, Petersburgh, Florence, Copenhagen, Ber- lin, &c. 41 IV. On the Determination of the Terms in the Disturbing Function of the fourth order as regards the Eccentricities and Inclinations which give rise to Secular Inequa- lities. By J. W. LUBBOCK, V.P. and Treas. R.S. V. On the Results of Tide Observations made in June 1834 at the Coast Guard Sta- tions in Great Britain and Ireland. By the Rev. WILLIAM WHEWELL, F.R.S. VI. On certain Peculiarities in the Double Refraction and Absorption of Light exhi- bited in the Oxalate of Chromium and Potash. By Sir DAVID BREWSTER, VII. Second Essay on a General Method in Dynamics. By WILLIAM ROWAN HAMIL- TON, Member of several Scientific Societies in Great Britain and in Foreign Countries, Andrews' Professor of Astronomy in the University of Dublin, and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. Communicated by Captain BEAUFORT, R.N. VIII. Continuation of a former Paper on the Twenty-five Feet Zenith Telescope lately erected at the Royal Observatory. By JOHN POND, Esq. A.R. F.R.S.. IX. Some account of the Eruption of Vesuvius, which occurred in the month of August 1834, extracted from the Manuscript Notes of the Cavaliere MONTICELLI, Foreign Member of the Geological Society, and from other sources; together with a Statement of the Products of the Eruption, and of the condition of the Volcano subsequently to it. By CHARLES DAUBENY, M.D. F.R.S. F.G.S. &c. Professor X. On the Atmospheric Tides and Meteorology of Dukhun (Deccan), East Indies. By Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. SYKES, F.R.S. L.S. G.S. Z.S. Vice-President of the XI. Geometrical Investigations concerning the Phenomena of Terrestrial Magnetism. By THOMAS STEPHENS DAVIES, Esq. F.R.S. Lond, and Ed. F.R.A.S. Royal XII. Researches towards establishing a Theory of the Dispersion of Light. Rev. BADEN POWELL, M.A. F.R.S. Savilian Professor of Geometry in the Uni- PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. I. THE BAKERIAN LECTURE.-On the Proofs of a gradual Rising of the Land in certain parts of Sweden. By CHARLES LYELL, Jun. Esq. F.R.S. Received October 4,-Read November 27, 1834. IT is now more than one hundred years since the Swedish naturalist CELSIUS expressed his opinion that the waters, not only of the Baltic, but of the whole Northern Ocean, were gradually sinking; and he represented their level as lowering at the rate of forty Swedish inches in a century*. He observed that several rocks which not long ago were sunken reefs and dangerous to navigators, had become in his time above water; that the sea was constantly leaving dry new tracts of land along its borders; that ancient ports had become inland towns; and that old fishermen and seafaring people could testify that at a variety of places, both on the shores of the Baltic and the ocean, considerable changes had taken place within the time of their memory, in the form of the coast and depth of the sea. Lastly he appealed to marks which had been cut in the rocks before his time expressly to indicate the former level, and the waters were observed to have fallen below these marks. This notion of a change continually in progress in the relative level of land and sea was at first warmly controverted, and many facts were adduced to prove that there had not been a general fall of the waters even in the Baltic. It was supposed by many that there might have been some error in the observations, as the Baltic, though free from tides, is often raised for several days continuously two or three feet above its standard level by the melting of the snow, or by the prevalence of particular winds; and it was remarked that the altered form of the coast and the shallowing of the sea might be ascribed partly to new accessions of land at points where rivers entered, depositing sand and mud, and partly to the drifting of large blocks by ice, which are sometimes stranded and driven up on rocks and low islands so as to raise their height. PLAYFAIR, in the year 1802, in his "Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory," de * I have used the Swedish measure throughout this paper, for the sake of uniformity, when alluding to the measurements made by Swedes. The Swedish foot,, which is divided into twelve inches, agrees very nearly with our own, being less than ours by three eighths of an inch only. clared that the supposed change of relative level of sea and land in Sweden, which appeared to him to be sufficiently ascertained, might be ascribed to the movement of the land rather than of the waters. He observed, "that in order to depress or elevate the absolute level of the sea, by a given quantity, in any one place, we must depress or elevate it by the same quantity over the whole surface of the earth; whereas no such necessity exists with respect to the elevation or depression of the land*." The hypothesis of the rising of the land, he adds, "agrees well with the Huttonian theory, which holds that our continents are subject to be acted upon by the expansive forces of the mineral regions; that by these forces they have been actually raised up, and are sustained by them in their present situation†." In the year 1807 VON BUCH, after returning from a tour in Scandinavia, announced his conviction "that the whole country from Frederickshall in Sweden to Åbo in Finland, and perhaps as far as St. Petersburgh, was slowly and insensibly rising;" a conclusion to which he appears to have been led principally by information obtained from the inhabitants, and in part by the occurrence of marine shells, of recent species, which he had found at several points on the coast of Norway above the level of the sea. At several periods since this discussion began respecting the decline of the level of the Baltic Sea and German Ocean, marks have been cut on the rocks of exposed cliffs, both of islands and the main land, so as to indicate the then existing height of the waters, the year in which the marks were made being at the same time recorded. All these marks were examined in 1820-21 by the officers of the pilotage establishment of Sweden, and a report made by them to the Royal Academy at Stockholm, in which they declared, as the result of their measurement, that along the whole coast of the northern part of the Gulf of Bothnia the water is lower with respect to the land than formerly; but that the amount of variation, or change of level, has not been uniform. At the same time an account was given in, and published by the Academy, of new marks which were made in the same years, 1820-21, to record the level of the sea observed at the time of the survey. Notwithstanding the numerous proofs recorded of the change of level, and the high authorities who had declared in its favour, I continued, in common with many others, to entertain some doubts respecting the reality of the phenomenon, partly because I suspected that it might be explained by reference to more ordinary causes, such as some of those above mentioned, and partly because it appeared to me improbable that such great effects of subterranean expansion should take place in countries which, like Sweden and Norway, have been remarkably free within the times of history from violent earthquakes. The slow, constant, and insensible elevation of a large tract of land, is a process so different from the sudden rising or falling known to have accompanied, in certain regions, the intermittent action of earthquakes and volcanos, that the fact appeared to require more than an ordinary weight of evidence for its confirmation. I am willing, however, to confess, after * § 393. + § 398. |