THE PAEENT OF WATERS. 3 



will disappear as the continents of former epochs have already entirely 

 or in part disappeared ; and the unknown spaces which the waters now 

 cover, will rise in their turn, and appear as continents, islands, or 

 peninsulas. 



In the long period of geological centuries or ages during which 

 the lands are bathed, not by the waters of the sea, but solely by the 

 waves of the atmosphere, the ocean does not the less continue to modify 

 the configuration of the globe by its clouds, its rains, and all the me- 

 teoric influences which take their birth at its surface. All those atmo- 

 spheric agencies which rage about the summits of mountains, riving 

 them and little by little lowering them, it is the sea which despatches 

 them. All those glaciers which polish the rocks, and carry down into 

 the valleys those piled-up boulders, it is the clouds from the ocean 

 which deposit them in the form of snow on the summits of the 

 mountains. All those waters which penetrate by fissures into the 

 depths of the ground, which dissolve the rocks, hollow out the 

 caverns, bring mineral substances to the surface, and cause at times 

 great subterranean subsidences, what are they, but marine vapours 

 returning in a fluid state towards the basin from whence they arose ? 

 Finally, the numerous rivers which spread life over all the globe, and 

 without which the continents would be deserts wholly uninhabitable, 

 are nothing else than a system of veins, and veinlets, which carry 

 back to the great reservoir of the ocean, the waters distributed over 

 the soil by the arterial system of clouds and rain. It is, then, to the 

 phenomena of this oceanic life we must attribute the immense geolo- 

 gical operations of rivers, and the exceedingly important part which 

 they play in the flora and fauna of difierent countries, and in the 

 history of humanity itself. The future discoveries of geologists and 

 naturalists will tell us also what share in the production and develop- 

 ment of those germs of vegetable and animal life, which reach their 

 greatest beauty on continents, may be referred to the ocean. 



As for climate, upon the varieties of which all that lives upon the 

 earth depends, — does it not follow from movements of the ocean, as 

 well as from the position and elevation of the masses of land ? The 

 cold of polar latitudes would be more rigorous, and the heat of the 

 tropics more intense, and these extremes would undoubtedly destroy 

 most of the beings now in existence, if the currents of the ocean did 

 not convey water from the poles to the equator, and from the equator 

 to the poles ; thus constantly tending to an equalization of tempera- 

 ture. In the same way, the atmosphere of continents would be 

 completely deprived of vapour, and so perhaps rendered unfit for 



B 2 



