THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN. 45a 
higher elevations above the general surface: all is flat and even, 
and land nowhere rises above the mirror of a boundless 
ocean. 
This new state of things still affords the same spectacle of 
dreary uniformity and solitude in all its horrors. The tempera- 
ture of the waters is yet too high, and they contain too many 
extraneous substances, too many noxious vapours arise from the 
clefts of the earth-rind, the dense atmosphere is still too much 
impregnated with poisons, to allow the hidden germs of life any- 
where to awaken. A strange and awful primitive ocean rises and 
falls, rolls and rages, but nowhere does it beat against a coast: 
ho animal, no plant, grows and thrives in its bosom; no bird 
flies over its expanse. 
But meanwhile the hidden agency of Providence is unre- 
mittingly active in preparing a new order of things. The earth- 
rind increases in thickness, the crevices become narrower, and 
the fluid or semi-fluid masses escaping through the clefts ascend 
to a more considerak.e height. 
Thus the first islands are formed, and the first separation be- 
tween the dry land and the waters takes place. At the same 
time no less remarkable changes occur, as well in the constitution 
of the waters as in that of the atmosphere. The farther the 
glowing internal heat of the planet retires from the surface, the 
greater is the quantity of water which precipitates itself upon it. 
The ocean, obliged to relinquish part of its surface to the dry 
Jand, makes up for the loss of extent by an increase of depth, 
and the clearer atmosphere allows the enlivening sunbeam to 
gild here the crest of a wave, there a naked rock. 
And now also Jife awakens in the seas, but how often has it 
changed its forms, and how often has Neptune displaced his 
boundaries since that primordial dawn. Alternately rising or 
subsiding, what was once the bottom of the ocean now forms 
the mountain crest, and whole islands and continents have been 
gradually worn away and whelmed beneath the waves of the sea, 
to arise and to be whelmed again. In every part of the world 
we are able to trace these repeated changes in the fossil remains 
embedded in the strata that have successively been deposited in 
thesea, and then again raised above its level by volcanic agencies, 
and thus, by a wonderful transposition, the history of the primi- 
tive ocean is revealed to us by the tablets of the dry land. The 
G@ 
