OF THE SEA AND LAND. 3 



are hourly and obvious. In the mountains, they are 

 seen in every fragment ; and every river carries with 

 it something to be deposited in the beds of lakes, in the 

 lower lands, or in the seas : while the movements of 

 the ocean transfer the materials which its shores re- 

 ceived ; spreading them to form the germs of future 

 strata. But the velocity of this process is variable. The 

 nature of the climate, the forms of the land, the qua- 

 lities of the rocks, with numerous minuter causes, 

 everywhere modify results which still terminate in that 

 destruction to which every thing must submit. In 

 Egypt, the resistance of the works of nature is not less 

 remarkable than that which still preserves its archi- 

 tecture for our instruction ; and while the waste of the 

 lower lands of England is imperceptible, every winter 

 is taking from the mountains of Scotland to add to its 

 plains and shores. And thus also does the more du- 

 rable granite long brave those elements under which 

 the softer sandstones are hourly yielding. The alluvia 

 themselves will be examined in a future chapter ; the 

 business of the present is of a more general and com- 

 prehensive nature. 



Of Rivers and their actions. 



The actions of rivers consist in destruction and in 

 reproduction ; the former process being evidently sub- 

 servient to the latter, and the whole constituting one of 

 the great Designs of Nature, for ends of the highest 

 importance respecting both a nearer and a more distant 

 future. I commence, of course, with the process of 

 destruction. 



From the moment that the rains first descended, the 

 rivers began to flow : but if there was, at the beginning, 

 such a condition of the atmosphere as has reasonably 

 been supposed, from the preceding effect of heat on 

 the ocean, the fall of water, and the consequent flow 



B 2 



