364 AUSTRALIA : 



observation the vitality which once pervaded the whole. 

 Looking forwards, we see the earth and seas still teeming 

 with the same profusion of life in its simpler forms, and 

 cannot but infer that these may hereafter undergo the same 

 changes and minister to the same great results.* Science 

 stands here, as in so many other instances, between the past 

 and future time ; casting upon the latter the light, more or 

 less distinct, which it derives from reflection of the former. 

 It may be that the period of all greater terrestrial revolutions 

 has come to a close ; and that man is destined henceforward 

 to live in comparative tranquillity on the globe. But in the 

 phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes in the gradual 

 upheaving or subsidence of lands and in the heat of deep 

 mines and Artesian wells, we have evidences of subterranean 

 actions still going on which cannot be wholly inoperative on 

 the surface. The bed of the Ocean, moreover that great 

 recipient of all deposits organic and inorganic, the debris 

 of the earth may be exposed to physical actions from under- 

 neath, of which we have no certain knowledge, but which 

 time, calculated by ages, may render of great account in the 

 futurity of our globe. 



Eecurring to the subject more immediately before us, we 

 would beg the reader to take up the map of New Holland, 

 and to fix his eye on Sandy Cape, in S. lat. 24 30', about 

 600 miles north of Sydney, and the most salient point on the 



* "We may mention, as it is not generally known, that Ehrenberg has actually 

 succeeded in producing Tripoli and polishing slate from living infusoria. We 

 may further add that he found in a peaty argillaceous deposit, twenty feet 

 below the pavement of Berlin, masses of infusoria still living, and in some 

 places deposits of ova reaching to much greater depth. In the public gardens 

 at Berlin workmen were occupied many days in removing masses wholly com- 

 posed of fossil infusoria. In the moors of Leinburg there occur similar accu- 

 mulations twenty-eight feet in thickness. Observation probably is alone 

 wanting to multiply indefinitely facts of similar kind ; but the inferences which 

 these, and other wonders of the fossil world, have already furnished, may well 

 be counted among the triumphs of modern science. 



