52 ON CHANGES IN THE DISPOSITION 



If the island of Banda is gradually rising, as the natives, 

 unperverted by Geological theories, believe and assert, 

 the general faet can admit of no doubt. 



Thus, then, in the first place, there is no reason to 

 suppose any falling of the sea in the north, and rising 

 in the Mediterranean, depending on some mysterious 

 cause, or on any which concerns the whole ocean ; 

 while there is, equally, no reason to suppose a dimi- 

 nution of the quantity of the sea. To suppose that 

 the bottom of the ocean has opened and engulfed its 

 waters, that the Mediterranean and other seas have 

 once been enclosed at higher levels, and that, by the 

 failure of their barriers, the general level of the ocean 

 has been altered, are dreams as gratuitous and unne- 

 cessary as they are clumsy and inapplicable. Equally 

 speculative is the notion that the mass of water on the 

 earth is diminishing. Every atom of that which cir- 

 culates through the great laboratory of Nature, returns 

 to its parent bed, except that alone, perhaps, which is 

 embodied in peat; nor were all this, and millions of 

 times more, restored at this moment to its original 

 state, could it make a sensible difference in the bulk 

 or level of the sea. I need only add, that the argu- 

 ment as to the general diminution of the sea, derived 

 from the elevations of the Coral islands, is nothing ; 

 since I have explained these in a much more satisfac- 

 tory manner : while the theories of Tertiary Deposits, 

 which have been founded on the same supposition, 

 cannot now require an answer. 



General Conclusions. 



I have thus examined the principal changes which 

 the surface has undergone since the commencement 

 of the present earth, and is now undergoing. And if 

 the latter depends chiefly on the action of rains and 



