490 ON THE SUCCESSIVE FORMS 



That it was universal as it was deep, scarcely admits a 

 question. The wide extent occupied by the superior 

 secondary strata, indicate the regions to which it 

 reached; nor can we conceive it to have been thus 

 widely diffused,, without involving the whole earth. If 

 there be a revolution, which, more than any preceding 

 one, can be considered universal, it is this. But we 

 have no right to suppose that it was a sudden cata- 

 strophe, or that the elevation of all the parts of the 

 present dry land was simultaneous, or even that this 

 change occupied a short period. It is more likely to 

 have consisted in a long series of similar events, and to 

 have occupied ages : we are ever misled by the sound 

 of the terms catastrophe and revolution. 



On Revolutions succeeding those of the secondary 

 Strata. 



It remains to examine the revolutions of a partial 

 nature which have taken place at different points of 

 the surface, produced by that last and general one 

 which I have thus described. The same general laws 

 apply to these ; they consist in elevations, and perhaps 

 of depressions also : as we must refer them to causes 

 of a corresponding nature, operating partially. 



Wherever the rocky surface of the earth remains in 

 that state of repose which succeeded to the last eleva- 

 tion of the strata, we find the secondary of the last 

 order following each other, even to the uppermost, in 

 a consecutive manner, and at angles of elevation which 

 are commonly moderate, though variable. Wherever 

 an interruption of that order takes place, we have 

 reason to suppose that some partial cause has operated 

 in that spot. But, besides this, we find, in certain 

 places, the materials which form the bottom of the 

 existing ocean, elevated to levels at which its waters 

 could not have stood, except under a diminution of 



