AQUEOUS CAUSES OF CHANGE, 197 



CHAPTER III. 



Aqueous Causes of Change. 



" The rivers swell, 



Of bonds impatient. Sudden from the hills, 

 O'er rocks and woods, in broad, brown cataracts, 

 A thousand snow-fed torrents shoot at once ; 

 And where they rush, the wide resounding plain 

 Is left one slimy waste." Thomson. 



in the preceding chapter we have given a general view of the 

 arrangement of the strata which compose the crust of the earth. 

 We now proceed to consider the changes at present going on in 

 the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. We will thus be 

 better prepared to admit that the fossil remains which occur 

 everywhere in the stratified rocks, and that the stratification of 

 those rocks, are results of laws now in full operation, but exerted 

 through a period of years, it would be utterly vain to attempt to 

 estimate. In the present chapter, which presents us with a sub- 

 ject which of itself might f..>rm a volume, we can only hastily 

 glance, at some of the most active causes of change now in ope- 

 ration, those who desire to learn more will find ample informa- 

 tion in the writings of Lyell, Mantell, Buckland, and other well 

 known geologists. 



Although from the very nature of the case, geology is some- 

 what a speculative science, since it takes into consideration the 

 changes and vicissitudes which tha earth has undergone, during 

 ages so remote, that the mind can with difficulty conceive of the 

 lapse of time past, and endeavors to explain them by the applica- 

 tion of laws now in action, but whose silent operation is unheeded 

 by the great mass, yet it at the same time presents us with the 

 noblest views of the material universe; and the philosophic mind, 

 in reviewing ever so cursorily, the traces of the past, cannot fail 

 to be struck with the harmony of the material world. Everything 



