1847.] Progressive Changes of Matter. 133 



perhaps thousands of feet in depth, and what astounding crashes 

 followed by the uiulerminingof its banks that were still over-hung 

 with other groups. The return of spring still gave greater facili- 

 ties for floods and land slides, when ice-bound rivers were broken 

 up and lake barriers gave way. 



We have given above our views in relation to the former con- 

 dition of matter, both as it regards its high and massive position, 

 and its subsequent removal. In so doing we do not conceive that 

 we have adopted a new mode of contemplating past realities. The 

 antiquarian naturalist, when he finds the bones of a monster ani- 

 mal, whose race has long since become extinct, restores them to 

 their appropriate places ; then the frame-work of the animal 

 stands before him as it originally existed. He then restores in 

 his imagination, the covering of this skeleton with sinews and 

 muscles, and in so doing he forms an idea of the propensities and 

 habits, the capacities and movements of the living creature. So 

 it is with the oriental traveller, who traverses the sites of ancient 

 cities ; and while he traces the base-walls of a dilapidated edifice 

 and sees its ruins scattered around him, he contemplates its pros- 

 trate columns, the relics of its dismembered entablature, he then 

 restores in his mind and not unfrequently in the history of his 

 travels, this architectural monument in all its due proportions, and 

 throws around it an air of its original beauty and grandeur. 



As further evidence that the earth had an exterior covering 

 which has been carried away by rain-floods ; we will mention 

 that from the rounded and smothed field stones,so plentifully strewed 

 over the surface, it is apparent that they must have been moved 

 and jumbled onwards through a long series of rubbings against 

 each other over an highly inclined surface. They were then 

 properly named drift, for the reason that they were driven along 

 by the force of the floods. While matter was in this condition, 

 every shower tore away some bank, and formed new ones in oth- 

 er places. One important fact should be well considered as 

 bearing upon the discussion, the universal tendency a stream 

 of water has to change its bed and line of flow, while bearing 

 along coarse material like gravel and field stones, when not re- 

 strained by rocky banks. We have at times an illustration of 

 this principle on a small scale, in tributary streams that bear 

 down drift material from the mountain side into the river valley, 

 not unfrequently to the great detriment of cultivated fields. 



We have spoken of an era before the excavation of river val- 

 leys, and let us suppose for a moment that the regions, extending 

 northerly from the Atlantic ocean to the line which divides the 

 waters that flow into it from those that flow into Artie seas, to be 

 one vast field of drift, we can see at once that no part of this field 

 could escape the deluge of waters that were periodically rained 



