> 01 CHANGES IN THE DISPOSITION 



i Me Tvrioti must have elapsed before this earth, thus 

 empty, was fitted for the reception of at least, terres- 

 trial life. Soil must have been prepared for vegetables; 

 and that soil was the produce of time ; though, in ad- 

 dition to the submarine alluvia of the previous ocean, 

 many portions of the land must have retained the allu- 

 vium and soil of a former period, since I have shown 

 that there could have been no revolution in which some 

 dry land did not remain. At what periods animals and 

 vegetables were placed in this renovated earth, physical 

 evidence does not enable us to discover: and it must 

 be remembered that, on this subject, the enquiries of 

 Geology are properly and purely physical. If deduc- 

 tions are to be formed from them in support of the 

 Historical records, they can have no value but by main- 

 taining the physical enquiry pure. To fabricate sys- 

 tems out of historical records, and then to use them in 

 support of those very records, is a species of logic 

 which seems to have taken refuge in geology when 

 abandoned everywhere else. 



While the land of the original earth was higher than 

 the present, the ocean was deeper. Time has shal- 

 lowed, and is still shallowing, these seas, and levelling 

 these mountains ; it is changing the outlines of our 

 continents ; and in rendering the rocky surface more 

 extensively habitable, it is also enlarging it, as it will 

 continue to do while the earth shall endure. He who 

 shall divest the present surface of all but its rocks, who 

 shall exterminate from our maps the great alluvial 

 plains and deltas of the globe, with the countless in- 

 terior tracts of the same nature, will produce a sketch 

 of the original earth, in no small degree interesting. It 

 is through decomposition and disintegration, aided by 

 mechanical power, that these changes have been pro- 

 duced. Whatever other causes have aided, the waste 

 of the rocks, and the transference of their materials, 



