272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1&16. 



TELEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



There are certain teleological features of the relations of land and 

 water to which attention may be drawn in closing. Without water, 

 no life such as we know would be possible. On the other hand, 

 uniformly deep water over the whole earth, such as might have been 

 expected in a rigidly mechanical scheme, would probably not have 

 provided the conditions necessary for the development of life. An 

 apparently accidental lack of homogeneity in the earth allows lighter 

 parts to rise above what would otherwise have been a universal sea. 

 The combined efforts of the epigene forces since the earliest known 

 times have been directed toward the destruction of continents and 

 islands and their reduction to shoals completely covered by the sea, 

 but their efforts have always b^en foiled by movements originating 

 in the earth's interior. No continent seems to have been completely 

 submerged since Triassic times. The life of land plants and animals 

 appears to have been uninterrupted since that time on all the con- 

 tinents. 



There has been perpetual oscillation in respect to the area and eleva- 

 tion of land exposed, but on the whole the balance has been care- 

 fully maintained. But for the presence of oceans of water, of an 

 abnormal lightness in some parts of the earth's crust, and an unfail- 

 ing balance for 50,000,000 years between the forces of elevation and 

 of destruction, life such as ours would have been impossible. Can we 

 look on these surprising adjustments as merely accidental? 



