OBJECTIONS AGAINST EVOLUTION. 169 



restrial, or inhabitants of fresh water, have been 

 formed in sedimentary deposits either of sand, 

 gravel or other porous material. Now, where such 

 deposits have been afterwards raised into the air 

 for any considerable time, and this has been more 

 or less the case with all deposits which are avail- 

 able for exploration, their fossiliferous contents will 

 have been, as a general rule, dissolved by the per- 

 colation of rain-water charged with carbonic acid. 

 Similarly, sea-water has recently been found to be 

 a surprisingly strong solvent of calcareous material ; 

 hence, Saturn-like, the ocean destroys its own prog- 

 eny as far as shells and bones of all kinds are con- 

 cerned, and this to an extent of which we have 

 probably no adequate conception. 



" Of still greater destructive influence, however, 

 than these solvent agencies in earth and sea, are the 

 erosive agencies of both. Anyone who watches 

 the pounding of the waves upon the shore ; who 

 then observes the effect of it upon the rocks broken 

 into shingle, and on the shingle reduced to sand ; 

 who, looking behind him at the cliffs, sees there evi- 

 dence of the advance of this all-pulverizing power an 

 advance so gradual that no yard of it is accomplished 

 until within that yard the ' white teeth ' have eaten 

 well into the ' bowels of the earth ; ' who then reflects 

 that this process is going on simultaneously over 

 hundreds of thousands of miles of coast-lines through- 

 out the world ; and who finally extends his mental 

 vision from space to time, by trying dimly to im- 

 agine what this ever-roaring monster must have 

 consumed during the hundreds of millions of years 



