“Elevation and Subsidence”

Abstract

IN the number of NATURE for September 20, Mr. W. F. Stanley (p. 488) requests references to where it has been considered that the sinking on the coast of Greenland is due to the weight of inland accumulation of ice. If Mr. Stanley has only so lately as the present year advocated this opinion, though doubtless the idea has arisen independently with him, he certainly has no right to consider himself the originator of it, which he seems disposed to do. So far as I am aware the priority is due to Mr. T. F. Jamieson (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxi. 1865), who attributed the subsidence, which is universally conceded to have occurred during the Glacial period, to the enormous weight of snow resting on the land, considering that if the interior of the earth on which the crust rests is in a state of fusion, a depression might take place from a cause of this kind; and then the melting of the ice would account for the rising of the land which seems to have followed upon the retreat of the glaciers.