THE HUMAN SPECIES. 41 



still remaining Piscadore and Bashee islets ; and the 

 tale, notwithstanding a due allowance for the expert 

 impostorship of the natives, seems confirmed, by the 

 fishermen's drag nets occasionally bringing to the sur- 

 face a curiously coloured porcelain, which the art, as 

 now understood in the celestial empire, is unable to 

 produce. The continent is separated from Formosa 

 by a sea, we believe, always in soundings, the shores 

 being bordered with a broad belt of sand, swamp, or 

 sunken rock, generally indications of progressive denu- 

 dations ; and both coasts are not unfrequently visited 

 by calamitous overflowings. Since these lines were 

 first written (1845), if the foreign news may be 

 credited, an event of this kind has again taken place 

 on the maritime provinces and the Yellow Sea, the 

 waters rising in the Gulf of Pechelee, to the destruc- 

 tion of several hundred thousand human lives, innu- 

 merable cattle, the loss of all the houses and provi- 

 sions, and the total ruin of above sixteen millions of 

 the population, who were driven to seek shelter and 

 food in the upland provinces. Even admitting pro- 

 bable exaggeration in the report, it is an event far 

 surpassing the traditional deluges of Greece, or any 

 other recorded in profane history. It is an occurrence 

 that may boldly be claimed as a proof of continued 

 depression of the southern and eastern shores of Asia, 

 and the oscillations produced on the sea by submarine 

 disturbance, which then, like a great tide wave, passes 

 upon the land far above its usual limit. 



In Japan, volcanic convulsions have been unremit- 



