CONTOUR OF THE COUNTRY. 235 



removed by being melted and run off as water, the land 

 rose to its present altitude. In regard to the contour of a 

 country which has passed through some such change of 

 altitude, it is stated by Sir John Herschel : 



' In the upheaval of any extensive tract of land from the 

 sea, hollows fitted for lake-basins cannot fail to be left. If 

 the upheaval be rude and paroxysmal, resulting in the 

 formation of mountain chains, and accompanied with frac- 

 ture and dislocation of the strata, such hollows will be 



How extraordinary the scene we have here unfolded ! Through all the wide solitude of 

 the Pacific, from which no tidings were wont to come, except of scattered tribes of 

 savage people, or of new and rich aromas, we are now summoned to discern the manifest 

 progress of the most stupendous changes to which our world can be subject ; mighty 

 movements of its solid crust, here subsiding and carrying for ever from human sight the 

 marvels of great continents, and, elsewhere, promising the birth of new ones, amidst 

 the deepest silences of the ocean ' 



And he goes on to say ' That there is no portion of these continents which has not 

 been subject to such memorable revolutions. That the whole land now protruded 

 above the waves, had long lain at the bottom 6f oceans, appears from the character and 

 contents of all the sedimentary recks ; for while these demonstrate, by their structure, 

 that they must have been deposited by the agency of superincumbent waters, they 

 envelope, now turned into stone, the remains of the sea-creatures that lived on the floor 

 of the ocean, when the stratum of mud, or sand, or lime, was there spread out, which 

 through the course of ages has become hardened into a corresponding rock. To dwell 

 on a consideration, at the present time so generally understood and accepted, does not 

 appear nqedful ; but a careful analysis of the rocks of these continents has revealed 

 another feature in the history of the changes which have affected the Earth by far too 

 remarkable to be passed slightly by. Not only have our existing masses of land been 

 subjected to a process of emersion, such as those tracts in the Pacific are undergoing, 

 by whose gradual rise novel forms and combinations are visibly preparing, but it is cer- 

 tain that they have experienced many and signal oscillations, now sinking beneath the 

 sea, now reappearing, so that those grand metamorphoses of the surface of our Planet 

 seem almost without limit or end. Look in illustration to the south-eastern counties of 

 England. We discern there, as characteristic of extensive localities, three singular for- 

 mations of considerable thickness. 



' The lower and upper formations are marine, that is, they contain solely the relics of 

 creatures that lived in the sea ; while the middle one, consisting of three distinct beds, 

 is entirely, or very nearly, of fresh-water origin. Now, observe the significance of this 

 curious intermixture. When the stratum No. 1 was deposited, it is indubitable that 

 the whole wide surface over which it is diffused must have been the floor of the ocean. 

 On the deposition of No. 2, which required the agency of a lake or river, the first bed 

 must have arisen from its previous depths, and constituted part of the dry land. Ages 

 had then passed, the beds of No. 2 being meanwhile formed in quiet and perfect 

 order ; and, at the close of this period, the land must again have sunk, and received 

 from the ocean the superincumbent chalk of No. 3, which by one more of those stupen- 

 dous revolutions has since been heaved up, so as now to constitute the bright cliffs of 

 that portion of our island. Two grand movements of upheaval, and one at least of sub- 

 sidence, are thus demanded for the explanation of this mere leaf in the annals of the 

 earth ; and a minuter inquiry wouid only add to the variety, and the better impress 

 the majesty of these changes. The intermediate fresh-water formation, for instance 

 (the Wealden), was the estuary of a river rivalling the Ganges, which there delivered its 

 volume of water into the ocean. Now that river must have drained some continent of 

 magnitude corresponding, a continent (as we learn from the scattered bones buried 

 in the mud of its estuary) filled with life in some of its strangest and most gigantic 

 developments ; and that has wholly disappeared ; carried downwards, either entirely 

 or in parts, by the subsidence which prepared the Wealden to receive the chalk.' 



