GEOLOGY. 



CHAP. XXII. 



On changes in the disposition of the Sea and Land. 



HAVING thus brought down the history of the Globe 

 to the period at which we must believe that it had un- 

 dergone its last important changes, and was, funda- 

 mentally at least, what we know it now, it remains to 

 pursue those which it has since experienced, and is still 

 undergoing ; exclusively however of the production of 

 coral and, the agency of volcanoes, already discussed. 

 I have shown the difficulty of ascertaining the exact 

 nature of the last great marine emergence of the land, 

 especially as it relates to Time ; as also that a long 

 period must have been occupied in minor and posterior 

 revolutions ; but although proving, therefore, that the 

 received notion of one brief and complete Emergence, 

 determining the present face of the sea and land, is in- 

 correct and careless, this subject must be treated from 

 such an imaginary condition : that I may avoid a com- 

 plication as intolerable, as it must be, in its details, 

 conjectural. 



Under such a view, the dry land must have been a 

 desert of rocks, without other soil than such alluvium 

 as might have been brought up from the bottom of the 

 sea ; without plants, and without animals ; the form- 

 less and void earth which anteceded the recorded Cre- 

 ation. In what manner to modify this simple and ab- 

 stract view, by any conjectures worth making, is not 

 now within the power of Geological information. But 

 under any views of later and partial changes, a consider- 



VOL. II. B 



