34 -On Bowlders and Rolled Stones. 
that the diminution may just equal the filling up, and this 
may remain a permanent fact. Does not this arise clearly 
from the arrangement of infinite wisdom? What has be- 
come of the water? There may be as you justly ob- 
serve, fileten a Dr Hayden’s book.) for ought we 
know, room enough in the earth for caverns of requisite 
dimensions from which the air or gas with which they were 
originally filled has been gradually absorbed or megeliad 
anc to which the waters as gradually retir ed. ‘Ther 
Possibly the process may Eerinher be sivcineds the wa- 
ters may be drawn out to assist in preserving, or in continuing 
the earth in its present limits during the will of the Creator, 
but if we cannot show what has become of the water, we can 
show where it has peels and what it has effected. But it is 
said the Scriptures mean to contradict the idea of the wa- 
ra ssi covered the Earth for a long time—I think not,— 
* In the beginning, &c.”—that undoubtedly is going far 
back, and that “the Earth was without form,” meaning no 
doubt without that form designed it by the Creator for the 
reception of man—still later * God said let the waters un- 
der the heavens be gathered together unto one place and 
let the dry land appear.” In God’s works we see only 
wisdom and sph Ri omnipotence, works unseen by man 
and animated nature generally. Those probably were 
the materials collected which have formed those immense 
beds of mineral coai already so essential to man. Clay 
and Lime, so necessary to the formation ofa good 
ductive soil, to the comfort and convenicial re Oo n, might 
then have been produced. It is not easy to see oe what 
agency except the gradual retiring of the ocean, the differ- 
ent earths could have been so mixed and blended together 
as to form a good soil. Every hill and mountain within 
¢ knowledge is covered with an alluvial or diluvial de- 
posit In this country, the rocks, chiefly granite, have been 
ground to dust, making of itself, in the fine powder to which 
it is reduced, a warm and genial soil for this cold climate. 
