CHAP. XXII. 
THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN. 
The Giant-Book of the Earth-rind.—The Sea of Fire.—Formation of a solid 
Earth-erust by cooling.—The Primitive Waters.—First awakening of Life in 
the Bosom of the Ocean.—The Reign of the Saurians.—The future Ocean. 
Tue greatest of all histories, traced in mighty characters by 
the Almighty himself, is that of the earth-rind. The leaves 
of this giant volume are the strata which have been succes- 
sively deposited in the bosom of the sea, or raised by volcanic 
powers from the depths of the earth ; the wars which it relates 
are the Titanic conflicts of two hostile elements, water and fire, 
each anxious to destroy the formations of its opponent; and the 
historic documents which bear witness to that ancient strife lie 
before us in the petrified or carbonified remains of extinct 
forms of organic existence— the medals of creation. 
It is only since yesterday that science has attempted to un- 
riddle the hieroglyphics in which the past history of our planet 
reveals itself to man, and it stands to reason that in so difficult 
a study truth must often be obscured by error; but although 
the geologist is still a mere scholar, endeavouring to decipher 
the first chapters of a voluminous work, yet even now the study 
of the physical revolutions of our globe distinctly points out a 
period when the molten earth wandered, a ball of liquid fire, 
through the desert realms of space. In those times, so distant 
from ours that even the wildest flight of imagination is unable 
to carry us over the intervening abyss, the waters of the ocean 
were as yet mixed with the air, and formed a thick and hazy 
atmosphere through which no radiant sunbeam, no soft lunar 
light, ever penetrated to the fiery billows of molten rock, which 
at that time covered the whole surface of the earth. What 
pictures of desolation rise before our fancy, at the idea of yon 
doundless ocean of fluid stone, which rolled from pole to pole 
