THE WAR IN THE OCEAN. 227 



Let us trace further the necessary succession of events. 

 The chemical war is now settled by treaty of peace ; but the 

 rains of a geologic spring-time are still frequent and copious. 

 The tides and waves stir up the fine particles resting on the 

 bottom, and these float off to the deeper situations, where 

 they subside as sediments fragmental sediments. This con- 

 sequence of unequal depth in different parts of the shallow 

 ocean is augmented in course of time, by the formation of 

 wrinkles in the crust. These resulted, as explained in Talk 

 XX, from the lateral pressure due to the contraction of the 

 earth within the crust. This was an incident of cooling. 

 The wrinkles did not, at first, rise above the surface of the sea ; 

 but they formed bars and shallows, while between them were 

 the depths. Over these bars the tides and waves stirred up 

 sediments which settled in the deeper water not far remote. 



I find no improbability in the supposition that plant life I 

 was now in existence. The fronds of fucoids could be rooted 

 on bottoms within reach of the aerating agency of the atmos- 

 phere; and though full sunlight was not yet revealed there 

 was a twilight sufficient to meet the requirements of the hum- 

 blest forms of vegetal life. Whence this life originated, 

 science is unable to declare. Yesterday there was no life yet, 

 on all the planet. To-day it is here positive organic life. 

 In the night a sower came and unobserved, strewed the beds 

 of ocean with germs which came to earth as a free gift ; and 

 now the world possesses a new capacity a new starting 

 point a new potency. From this datum, a limitless field of 

 speculation spreads out, which many a thinker has explored 

 in which many a thinker has been lost. The inductive evi- 

 dences supporting this deduction are found in the beUs of 

 graphite included in the older rocks, though I do not imagine 

 these to have been formed till many ages after the first advent 

 of marine plants. 



The time arrived when some of the ever-growing wrinkles 

 rose dripping above the ocean level. They were not, to any 

 great extent, domes and ridges of granite and granitic rocks. 

 They were arches of the primeval fire-formed crust. The 



