106 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
its continuity, displaced the ocean basin and made it 
pass successively over all the surface of the earth. 
Then, in the third chapter, he asks if the basin of 
the sea has always been where we now actually see it, 
and whether we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea 
in the place where it is now absent; if so, what are 
the causes of these changes. He reiterates his strange 
idea of a general movement of the ocean from east to 
west, at the rate of at least three leagues in twenty- 
four hours and due to the moon’s influence. And 
here Lamarck, in spite of his uniformitarian principles, 
is strongly cataclysmic. What he seems to have in 
mind is the great equatorial current between Africa 
and the West Indies. To this perpetual movement of 
the waters of the Atlantic Ocean he ventures to at- 
tribute the excavation of the Gulf of Mexico, and 
presumes that at the end of ages it will break through 
the Isthmus of Panama, and transform America into 
two great islands or two small continents. Not under- 
standing that the islands are either the result of 
upheaval, or outliers of continents, due to subsidence, 
Lamarck supposed that his westward flow of the ocean, 
due to the moon’s attraction, eroded the eastern shores 
of America, and the currents thus formed “in their 
efforts to move westward, arrested by America and by 
the eastern coasts of China, were in great part diverted 
towards the South Pole, and seeking to break through 
a passage across the ancient continent have, a long time 
since, reduced the portion of this continent which 
united New Holland to Asia into an archipelago 
which comprises the Molucca, Philippine, and Mariana 
Islands.” The West Indies and Windward Islands 
