312 Scientific Intelligence. [Oct. 



Norwegian coast on the east ; while the other passage is at the 

 Straits of Dover, measuring only 21 miles across. Now as this 

 aggregate loaterway is understood to remain nearly a constant 

 quantity, when a storm agitates the Atlantic Ocean, it is inferred 

 that the surplus and tidal waters of this great sea entering the 

 German Ocean, which is found to be so much encumbered with 

 debris, the effect of this operation must be to produce the 

 destructive appearances which we every where find to arise from 

 the encroachments of the sea. 



From the numerous sources of waste adduced in these papers 

 as observable both at the margin of the ocean, and in the interior 

 of the land, we are not surprised to find such immense collections 

 of sohd matter accumulated in the form of sand-banks, to which 

 not only the sea itself along the shores, but every rill and river, 

 is constantly bringing fresh matter to the ocean, that great 

 storehouse for these exuviae, which, in their turn, must necessa- 

 rily displace a corresponding bulk of water. 



It, therefore, becomes an interesting branch of this subject to 

 inquire how the surplus waters are to be disposed of, especially 

 if we extend this reciprocating principle of the deterioration of 

 the land, and the elevation of tlie waters of the ocean, to all parts 

 of the globe. 



In accounting for this, it is observed in the first place that 

 water, being the great pabulum of nature, is universally employed 

 in the organisation and nourishment of all bodies, and that the 

 quantity of water thus entering, either simply, or chemically, 

 into the constitution of the whole animate and inanimate crea- 

 tion, an immense quantity of water is supplied by the process of 

 evaporation, which must thus be permanently held in solution. 

 On the other hand, another view is given upon the supposition 

 of its being contended that the processes of evaporation, conden- 

 sation, decomposition, and regeneration, so completely compen- 

 sate and counterbalance each other, that the quantity of water 

 must ever remain the same. In this case, it is suggested that 

 the surplus waters arising from the silting up of the bottom of 

 the ocean may be taken off by the natural tendency of the fluid 

 to find its level at the oblate figure of the Poles, these points 

 being comparatively nearer to the centre of the earth than the 

 equatorial regions where the centrifugal force acting more 

 strongly must there prevent the accumulation of these waters. 



It is further presumed that such an accumulation of water in 

 the great polar basins may at some former period in the history 

 of the globe have deranged these imaginary points which obser- 

 vation has shown not to be altoo'ether stationary ; and to this 

 cause we may perhaps trace many of those appearances which 

 are so puzzling to geologists, and afford undoubted proofs of a 

 greater elevation of the waters of the ocean than we now find 

 them to possess. 



