RISE OF THE BED OF THE SEA TO THE HEIGHT OF 300 FEET, IN THE HUMAN PERIOD, IN SARDINIA.

Count Albert de la Marmora, in his description of the geology of Sardinia,* has shown that on the southern coast of that island, at Cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living species, and numerous fragments of antique pottery, has been elevated to the height of from 230 to 324 feet above the present level of the Mediterranean.

     (* "Partie Geologique" volume 1 pages 382 and 387.)

Oysters and other shells, of which a careful list has been published, including the common mussel (Mytilus edulis), many of them having both valves united, occur, embedded in a breccia in which fragments of limestone abound. The mussels are often in such numbers as to impart, when they have decomposed, a violet colour to the marine stratum. Besides pieces of coarse pottery, a flattened ball of baked earthenware, with a hole through its axis, was found in the midst of the marine shells. It is supposed to have been used for weighting a fishing net. Of this and of one of the fragments of ancient pottery Count de la Marmora has given figures.

The upraised bed of the sea probably belongs in this instance to the Pleistocene period, for in a bone breccia, filling fissures in the rocks around Cagliari, the remains of extinct mammalia have been detected; among which is a new genus of carnivorous quadruped, named Cynotherium by M. Studiati, and figured by Count de la Marmora in his Atlas (Plate 7), also an extinct species of Lagomys, determined by Cuvier in 1825. Embedded in the same bone-breccia, and enveloped with red earth like the mammalian remains, were detected shells of the Mytilus edulis before mentioned, implying that the marine formation containing shells and pottery had been already upheaved and exposed to denudation before the remains of quadrupeds were washed into these rents and included in the red earth. In the vegetable soil covering the upraised marine stratum, fragments of Roman pottery occur.

If we assume the average rate of upheaval to have been, as before hinted, 2 1/2 feet in a century, 300 feet would give an antiquity of 12,000 years to the Cagliari pottery, even if we simply confine our estimate to the upheaval above the sea-level, without allowing for the original depth of water in which the mollusca lived. Even then our calculation would merely embrace the period during which the upward movement was going on; and we can form at present no conjecture as to the probable era of its commencement or termination.

I learn from Captain Spratt, R.N., that the island of Crete or Candia, about 135 miles in length, has been raised at its western extremity about 25 feet; so that ancient ports are now high and dry above the sea, while at its eastern end it has sunk so much that the ruins of old towns are seen under water. Revolutions like these in the physical geography of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, may well help us to understand the phenomena of the Palermo caves, and the presence in Sicily of African species of mammalia.