132 EXPLANATIONS. 



manner exemplified a few years ago in the ingenious 

 experiments of Sir James Hall ; basaltic columns 

 rose for the future wonder of man, according to 

 the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in 

 operation before the eyes of our fathers; and 

 hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with 

 crystals, precisely as they could now be by virtue 

 of electric action, as shown within the last few 

 years by Crosse and Becquerel. The seas obeyed 

 the impulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their 

 sandy bottoms as seas of the present day are 

 doing; the trees grew as now by favour of sun 

 and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in 

 bad ; this, while the animals above fishes were yet 

 to be created. The movements of the sea, the 

 meteorological agencies, the disposition which we 

 see in the generality of plants to thrive when 

 heat and moisture were most abundant, were 

 kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply 

 natural order, throughout the whole of the ages 

 which saw reptiles enter in their various forms 

 upon the sea and land. It was about the time of 

 the first mammals, that the forest of the Dirt Bed 

 was sinking in natural ruin amidst the sea sludge, 

 as forests of the Plantagenets have been doing for 

 several centuries upon the coast of England. In 



