594 THE UNIVERSE. 



deluge ; but their opinions vary greatly as to the epoch to 

 which we should refer the appearance of America and the 

 antiquity of the human species. Here modern science re- 

 lapses into speculation. 



As our cataclysms indicate the different stages of a cease- 

 less force, it is evident that others still menace us. Every- 

 thing, indeed, seems to foretell that ages to come will see 

 other plutonic phenomena display themselves, and new sys- 

 tems of mountains arise. Hence, as the upheavals follow 

 a progressively ascending scale, we are quite led to expect 

 new outbursts and more terrible convulsions. 



Man has been enabled to verify these assertions, and him- 

 self to behold mountains issue from the bosom of the earth. 

 In 1538 one formed in the environs of Naples. In 1759, at 

 two or three days' journey from Mexico, Jorullo, since so 

 celebrated, reared its volcanic plateau. Above a plain for- 

 merly dedicated to agriculture, a surface of ten square 

 leagues was raised into the air, and transformed into nu- 

 merous and ever-active craters. 



This may be a fitting place to say that man}' contempo- 

 ary geologists maintain that these telluric changes were not 

 the effect of sudden transition, but of slow, insensible prog- 

 ress. To the school of Cuvier, which proclaimed the in- 

 fallibility of this great man, has succeeded another, more 

 skeptical, which maintains that, instead of violent cataclysms 

 returning at successive periods to convulse the globe, it has 

 been governed by harmonious laws, which, without shocks, 

 without violence, transformed its surface, and perfected 

 there, slowly and progressively, the work of creation. This 

 daring school, which has seated itself upon the wreck of 



