( 309 ) 



The stipposed recent Origin of America refuted. 



A. VEEY ingenious naturalist, Mr Smith Barton, has said, 

 with much justice, " I can only consider as puerile, and in no 

 way proved by natural evidence, the supposition that a great 

 pail of America has emerged from the bosom of the wa- 

 ters at a later period than the other continents *.■" May I be 

 permitted to quote a passage from a memoir which I composed, 

 on the Native Tribes of America -|-. " Justly celebrated wri- 

 ters have often repeated, that America is, in every sense of the 

 word, a New Continent. That richness of vegetation, that mass 

 of immense rivers, those great volcanoes, always in action, an- 

 nounce, say they, that the earth, incessantly trembling and not 

 entirely dry, is less removed from the original chaotic state than 

 in the old world. Long before my voyage, such ideas appeared 

 to me as unphilosophical as opposed to the generally known 

 laws of physics. These images of youth and disorder, as well 

 as of dryness and progressive loss of vigour in the Earth, as it 

 grows old, could only originate with those who amuse them- 

 selves with seeking out contrasts between the two hemispheres, 

 and do not comprehend under a general view the constitution 

 of our planet. Will it be said that the southern part of Italy 

 is a newer country than Lombardy, because it is almost conti- 

 nually shaken by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ? Besides, 

 our [present volcanoes and earthquakes are shght phenomena 

 compared with those revolutions of nature which the geologist 

 must suppose to have taken place in the days of the melting and 

 cooling of the masses which have formed the mountains, when 

 the Earth was yet in a state of chaos. Different causes must 

 make the effects of the energy of nature vary in different cli- 

 mates. In the New World, the volcanoes, to the number of 

 fifty-four, may perhaps have burnt longer, because the chain of 

 lofty mountains in which they are situated is nearer the sea, and 

 because this circumstance, and the perpetual snow which covers 

 them, appear to modify the subterranean fire, in a manner as 

 yet little appreciated. Earthquakes and eruptions act there pe« 



* Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, vol L p. 4. 

 t Berliner Monatschrifl, t. xv. p. 190. 



