Essay introductory to Geology. 1 7 



continents, which from the phenomena of dislocation, appears in a great 

 degree to have been accomplished by very violent convulsions. He will 

 naturally conclude, that thus violently raising such vast masses from the 

 bosom of the ocean, must have necessarily produced distinct waves and 

 currents, which would have swept over the emerging surface with the most 

 destructive efficacy ; and he will find the actual phenomena again in har- 

 mony with his anticipations. Vide supra III. 3. 



Should he wish to enquire into the probable forces which may have 

 operated in thus elevating such vast portions of the crust of our planet, the 

 only similar force which the analogy of nature presents to him, will be 

 that which in the classical ages elevated the Grecian promontory of 

 Methone, and in more recent times has raised the Mexican Jorullo and 

 the Italian Monte Nuovo, and created new islands among the Azores and 

 in the Mediterranean, — the force of earthquakes and volcanos, a force still 

 producing effects exactly similar in kind, though very inferior in degree. 

 It was exactly thus that a very able writer of Greece, Strabo, originally 

 reasoned ; and the more observation has proceeded, the more his conclu- 

 sions have been confirmed. In examining geological phenomena, with 

 reference to this question, he will notice as corroboratory facts, the far 

 more extensive prevalence of volcanic action in the earlier geological 

 periods ; and the strong analogies which favour the presumption, that the 

 very fundamental rock on which the whole rests (granite), was itself origi- 

 nally in a state of igneous fusion. This may perhaps lead him still further 

 to incline towards the belief of Leibnitz, that the nucleus of the earth was 

 originally brought into a state of fluidity (and that it must have been fluid, 

 its figure physically demonstrates), by igneous action : and that its present 

 solid crust has originated partly from the refrigeration of the surface of this 

 mass, and partly from the precipitates from the circumambient ocean. 

 Tliis view of the subject is well illustrated, in some of the diagrams in the 

 concluding volume of Lycll's very able elements ; but he will perhaps draw 

 a further inference from these very representations, which that author has 

 failed to draw ; for he may see in them an evident reason why the pertur- 

 bations of tliis igneous mass, acting in the earlier periods, when the crust 

 which confined it was as yet in a thin and almost nascent state, and could 

 therefore have opposed but a comparatively trifling resistance, must have 

 produced efi"ects incalculably superior in degree to those for which they 

 are at present adequate, when repressed by the enormous column of 

 resistance which the whole thickness of the actually consolidated crust at 

 present offers. If we believe, as Mr. Lyell is most anxious that we should 

 believe, that the laws of nature are ever permanent and uniform, we must 

 admit it as one of the plainest of those constant laws, " that the same 

 given force, when it acts under a less resistance, must necessarily produce 

 far more powerful effects than when it acts under an increased resistance.^' 

 And if I may be allowed this axiom, I liold myself able to prove, from 



No. I.— Vol. I. D 



