Price.] -^^l [March 3, 17 & 



waves. Deposits bearing the marks of oceanic action reach to an elevation 

 of six thousand feet on Afou7it Waiihingtoii, two thousand or more on 

 the Green Mountains, and thi'ee thousand on Monadnock. Bvit this deep 

 submergence was not of long continuance. Slowly the continent rose again 

 from its deep sea burial," 229. Thus the continent here, as we shall see in 

 Europe, seems to rise and fall thousands of feet at the bidding of theorists. 



The Ohio Geological Report of 187:5, written by Dr. Newbury, is equally 

 threatening ; 1 vol. 85 : "The period immediately following the Tertiary 

 age in geological histor}', but separated from it by we know not how 

 many thousands of years, presents us with a complete change in the physi- 

 ftil condition not only of our own continent, but apparently of the whole 

 northern hemisphere ; a change not exceeded bj' that which takes place 

 upon our surface in the alternations of season from mid -summer to mid- 

 winter. We have abundant evidence that during what is called the drift 

 period the climate of our continent had changed from the all pervading 

 warmth of the Tertiary to an all pervading arctic cold. While in the 

 fi)rmer age the climate of our Southern States was carried to Greenland, in 

 the latter the 2^ resent climate of Greenland teas brought as far south as the 

 Ohio. The continent of Greenland is now nearly buried under snow and 

 and ice." " Precisely such must have been the condition of much of the 

 North American Continent during the glacial period, for we find evidence that 

 glaciers covered the greater part of the surface down to the latitude of 88 

 or 40 degrees." The smoothed and grooved rocks are covered with the 

 glacial drift deposits ; and upon and mingled with it, is the Erie clay ; de- 

 posited from suspension in water and stratified ; doubtless from basins 

 where had been the retreating glaciers, p. 86. 



If geologists did not produce so many restorations of the past, full of 

 wonderful instruction, we would be apt to say that surely the imagination 

 had large operation in making such confident explanations of the past do- 

 ings of Nature upon this globe. (Jrand, sublime, were and are her opera- 

 tions ; but one cannot help thinking if they could be seen that their pro- 

 gression was slow and orderly, without extreme vicissitudes, and as 

 harmless as we now see them. There was ample time for the work ; and 

 Geologists readily allow any amount needful for observed eftects, counting 

 a thousand years as a day. The sedimentary rocks show that the process 

 was generally a quiet one. the more modern with fewest faults ; and certainly 

 nothing could have been more carefully done, than the manner of the growth 

 and storing away of the coal and oil, under their rocky coverings for the use 

 of the human beings that were to occupy the world. Excepting the ventila- 

 ting volcanoes, and the mountain-heaving earthquakes, the elevations and 

 depressions of the earth have been at the rat(! of but a few feet in a centurj^ 

 so that it can hardly l)e soberly said that the land was gained by "un- 

 numbered throes." Nay the probability seems to be that the concurring 

 operation of the sinking of the sea beds and the rai.sing up of the moun- 

 tains, the one balancing the other, were then as now, only to be gauged by 

 the lapse of the centuries, so quiet and imperceptible were they. Geology 



