GENERAL INFERENCES. 87 



are we reminded of the comparatively short period of time, as 

 of the close proximity in distance, since volcanoes existed in our 

 own island, and their subterranean fires, which have only re- 

 treated a few hundred miles, melted materials sufficient to form 

 cones, to shatter and upheave mountains. 



And if so, in the comparatively modern, how much greater 

 were the agencies at work and the changes effected in the older 

 days of the earth's history '? The bulk of dry land, compared 

 with water, was in the primary times of these cosmical arrange- 

 ments, perhaps only a twentieth instead of a third part, as now, 

 of the supermarine area of the globe. How infinitely greater, 

 therefore, the action of the waters over all the materials subject 

 to their disintegrating power ; whether upon the islands and 

 continents already elevated above their waves, or upon the 

 immense submarine tracts of rock just lifting up their peaks 

 and being raised into the air ? Nor, in alluding to volcanic 

 products, can we fail to perceive how greatly inferior are all 

 the modern to those of the palaeozoic ages ; the mountains of 

 the historic and the tertiary periods to those of the secondary 

 and primary, when all the loftiest ranges were bursting into 

 position — the great American Continent, not as now with a few 

 isolated cones, but rending all over as the mighty Andes, Cor- 

 dilleras, and Rocky Mountains were rising above the deep, and 

 acquiring outline ; and in every quarter of the globe, through 

 Asia, Africa, and Europe, when our great Alpine groups were 

 formed, and all the plutonic, erosive, and denuding agencies 

 were upon a scale of corresponding magnitude and force. 



" It is true, indeed," says an eloquent writer,* " that Nature is constant 

 and regular in her operations ; but if, in the short course of our experience or 

 of that of past observers, no variation may have been noticed in the uniformity 

 of her workings, it is that the little segment of her duration's cycle over which 

 we and they have travelled, is but as a straight line, an infinitesimal element, 

 whose curvature can only appear when referred to a much larger portion of 

 her circumference. That besides the particular laws with which we are ac- 

 quainted, there have been others once most active, whose agency is now 

 either suspended or concealed, the study of the world must easily convince 



* Dr. Wiseman's Lectures, p. 154. 



