144 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. in. 



in some places to 700 and 800 feet, astonished him greatly. 

 He knew they must all have been formed slowly beneath 

 the sea, out of the remains of corals and other animals, 

 uhose skeletons or shells are composed of lime, and that 

 they must afterwards have been raised up to the height <A 

 3000 feet above the sea, at which he found them ; and 

 when he thought of the time which this must have taken, 

 and remembered that it had all happened since the other 

 great masses of rocks below, containing extinct shells, had 

 been formed, he felt more than ever convinced that the 

 world must be very old to have allowed time for all the 

 wonderful changes that have taken place. 



In 1830 his book was published, and though it met with 

 great opposition because men's minds were prejudiced the 

 other way, yet his facts could not be denied. He showed, 

 for example, on the one hand that the river Ganges in India 

 carries down every year, and deposits in the sea, as much 

 mud as would make sixty of the great pyramids of Egypt, 

 and which if it was brought in ships would require 2000 

 full-sized merchant vessels laden with mud to sail down the 

 Ganges every day. Here, then, was an example of rocks 

 being now laid down in the sea, not by violent floods and 

 sudden catastrophes, but so quietly that no one even notices 

 that nature is at work. 



Then, on the other hand, he pointed out how in our 

 own little island, on the coasts of Yorkshire and Norfolk, 

 the sea eats away the cliffs, so that towns such as Auburn, 

 Hartburn, and Hyde in Yorkshire, which are marked upon 

 old maps, have been entirely washed away, and the giound 

 on which they stood has been spread out on the bottom of 

 the ocean ; and yet this is done so gradually, year by year, 

 that new towns of the same name are built up farther inland, 

 and no one disturbs themselves about the loss. 



