Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T17:17:47.000Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

IV.—The Pleistocene Geology of the Firth of Tay and the “Elevation and Subsidence” Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Extract

Within the last few months a good deal has been written upon the question of upheavals and depressions in the crust of the earth both in the Geological Magazine and in “Nature.” By far the majority of these writers have maintained with some show of reason that depressions are the result of the deposition of material of some sort on a part of the earth where it was not previously, in consequence of which the newly loaded part sinks down, just as a weight placed upon an air cushion causes the part on which the weight rests to be depressed. This novel view has been supported by pointing to the fact that numerous instances are met with in which vast thicknesses of rocks have been superimposed one upon another, while throughout their whole depth traces of shallow or comparatively shallow water are found, it being inferred that the sedimentary deposit being the cause of the depression, the bottom sinks exactly in proportion to the amount of the deposit. The Carboniferous system has been advanced as a conspicuous instance of this state of matters; the same holds true of the lower Old Red Sandstone, which appears to have been deposited in lakes.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1883

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For previous communications on this subject see GEOL. MAG. 1881, pp. 34, 491, and 334, and 1882, p. 540.