are in favour of a HEAVING UP OF THE LAND, BY A FORCE FROM BENEATH.  The probable nature of this force is indicated most distinctly, if not demonstrated, by the phenomena which attended the memorable earthquake of Chili, in November, 1820,*** which was felt throughout a space of fifteen hundred miles from north to south.  For it is stated upon the clearest evidence, that after formidable shocks of earthquake, repeated with little interruption during the whole night of the 19th of November (and the shocks were continued afterwards, at intervals, for several months) IT APPEARED, on the morning of the 20th, THAT THE WHOLE LINE OF COAST FROM NORTH TO SOUTH, TO A DISTANCE OF ABOUT ONE HUNDRED MILES, HAD BEEN RAISED ABOVE ITS FORMER LEVEL.  The alteration of level at Valparaiso was about three feet; and some rocks were thus newly exposed, on which the fishermen collected the scallop-shell fish, which was not known to exist there before the earthquake.  At Quintero the elevation was about four feet.  “When I went,” the narrator adds, “to examine the coast, although it was high-water, I found the ancient bed of the sea laid bare, and dry, with beds of oysters, mussels, and other shells adhering to the rocks on which they grew, the fish being all dead, and exhaling most offensive effluvia.  And I found good reason to believe that the coast had been raised by earthquakes at former periods in a similar manner; several ancient lines of beach, consisting OF SHINGLE MIXED WITH SHELLS, extending, in a parallel direction to the shore, to the height of fifty feet above the sea.”  Such an accumulation of geological evidence, from different quarters and distinct classes of phenomena, concurs to demonstrate the existence of most powerful expansive forces within the earth, and to testify their agency in producing the actual condition of its surface, that the phenomena just now described are nothing more than what was to be expected from previous induction.  These facts, however, not only place beyond dispute the existence of such forces, but show that, even in detail, their effects accord most satisfactorily with the predictions of theory.  It is not, therefore, at all unreasonable to conceive, that, in other situations, phenomena of the same character have been produced by the same cause, though we may not at present be enabled to trace its connexion with the existing appearances so distinctly; and though the facts, when they occurred, may have been unnoticed, or may have taken place at periods beyond the reach of historical record, or even beyond the possibility of human testimony.

(Footnote.  Peron Voyage etc. volume 2 pages 165 to 183.)

(**Footnote.  Geological Transactions Second Series volume 1 page 403, 404.)