A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE CORRIDORS OF TIME. 489 



is Sir Charles Lyell's " Principles." The feature which characterizes 

 Lyell's work is expressed in the title of the hook, " Modern Changes 

 of the Earth and its Inhabitants considered as illustrative of Geology." 

 Lyell shows how the changes now going on in the earth have in course 

 of time produced great effects. He points out triumphantly that there 

 is no need of supposing mighty deluges and frightful earthquakes to 

 account for the main facts of geology. 



Lyell attempts to show that the present action of winds and storms, 

 of rains and rivers, of ice and snow, of waves and tides, will account 

 for the formation of strata, and that the gentle oscillations of the earth's 

 crust will explain the varying distribution of land and water. In this 

 we can to a great extent follow him. I am quite satisfied with the 

 oscillations in the land. If the land rises an inch or two every century 

 in one place and falls to the same extent elsewhere, all that is required 

 has been explained. Nor do I feel at present disposed to question his 

 views as to rivers or to glaciers, to rains or to winds. There is, how- 

 ever, one great natural agent of which Lyell does not take adequate 

 account. He does not attach enough importance to the tides. No 

 doubt he admits that the tides do some geological work. He even 

 thinks they can do a great deal of work. The sea batters the cliffs on 

 the coasts/'and wears them into sand and pebble's. The glaciers grind 

 down the mountains, the rains and frosts wear the land into mud, and 

 rivers carry that mud into the sea. In the calm depths of ocean this 

 mud subsides to the bottom ; it becomes consolidated into rocks ; in 

 the course of time these rocks again become raised, to form the dry 

 land with which we are acquainted. 



The tides, says Lyell, help in this work. Tidal currents aid in 

 carrying the mud out to sea ; they aid to a considerable extent in the 

 actual woi'k of degradation, and thus contribute their quota to the 

 manufacture of stratified rocks. Such is the modest role which Lyell 

 has assigned to the tides, and no doubt the majority of geologists have 

 acquiesced in this doctrine. Nor can there be any doubt that this is a 

 just view of tidal action at present. That it is a just view of tidal 

 action in past times is what I now deny. Lyell did not know Lyell 

 could not have known that our tides are but the feeble surviving 

 ripples of mighty tides with which our oceans once pulsated. Intro- 

 duce these mighty tides among our geological agents, and see how 

 waves and storms, rivers and glaciers, will hide their diminished heads. 



I must attempt to illustrate this view of tidal importance in ancient 

 geological times. Let me try by the aid of the tides to explain the 

 great difficulty which every one must have felt in regard to Lyell's 

 theory. I allude to the stupendous thickness of the Paleozoic rocks. 



Look back through the Corridors of Time in the manner in which 

 they are presented to us in the successive epochs of geology. ~\\ e 

 pass rapidly over the brief career of prehistoric man ; then through 

 the long ages of Tertiary rocks, when the great mammals were devel- 



