254* EARLY STATE OF 



We cannot know what was the condition of the 

 water at that early stage of our globe's history 

 whether it was fresh, or impregnated with saline 

 substances as at the present day. Many of the 

 plants, the remains of which are found in the 

 strata, have more the character of fresh water 

 aquatics than of plants now found in the salt sea. 

 The fishes also have, many of them, the charac- 

 ters of fresh water fishes ; and as for many of the 

 shells, though we know but little of their inhabit- 

 ants, perhaps they are as much adapted for fresh 

 water as for salt. When we take all those cir- 

 cumstances into consideration, we may perhaps be 

 warranted in saying that the sea which, in those 

 primal days, rolled over the whole globe, was 

 water in a much more simple state than the sea 

 of the present time, and that as new actions began 

 to be carried on over the land, the sea became 

 the receptacle of new products. 



Bearing all those things in mind, we can carry 

 our speculation back to the period of the first in- 

 ternal action of the earth, the time when the 

 first mountain ridge (that ridge which was in time 

 to become the centre and spine of a continent,) 

 began to ascend from the bottom of the deep. 

 We have already spoken of the great pressure 

 which must have opposed its ascent ; but we must 

 bear in mind that that pressure was exactly 

 balanced by the resistance of the bottom, so that, 

 mighty as were the weights, both upward and 

 downward, so nice was the poise, that a single 

 grain would have given it either the one direction 

 or the other. It is one of the beauties in the ar- 

 rangements of nature, and one which, though man 

 must admire, his art can never imitate, that the 



