From a knowledge of the incessant and immense deposits 

 beneath the surface of the waters, there shoukl be, if the 

 quantity of 7vater remained constant^ a general elevation 

 of water surface, and slow but certain advance of water 

 upon land. 



The great preponderance of facts, however, goes to prove 

 that the land surfaces have actually gained upon the waters, 

 although there are limited areas where the sea is said to be 

 encroaching, as upon the coasts of Greenland and ^orwaj^ 

 and the wash of cliffs upon some exposed ocean shores. 



The broad truth that every part of the earth's surface 

 has at some time been under water is very pertinent. There 

 is evidence of the action of water not only at heights far 

 above the sea level and upon the interior of continents, but 

 the horizontal formations, as those of the Pyrenees and 

 the Cape of Grood Hope prove the undisturbed condition 

 of the strata. 



The earlier deposits were more general in character and 

 of greater extent, gradually diminishing as they advance 

 in time and change in the structure of their organic re- 

 mains. Since the beginning of the tertiary period the dry 

 land in the Northern Hemisphere has been constantly on the 

 increase. The immensely powerful erosive forces in the 

 British Islands, where tens of thousands of feet of the solid 

 rock formations have been washed out, leaving terraces and 

 water marks hundreds of feet above the present ocean 

 level — the raised beaches sCnd water lines of Norway, 

 Sweden, France, Italy, Greece — the advance of land around 

 the entire borders of the Mediterranean Sea — land beyond 

 Antwerp left dry within the historic period — and the well 

 known great advances of all the deltas of the large rivers 

 of the world — the glacial deposits, proving the ^N^orthern 

 Oceans to have receded to their present levels from the 

 lower latitudes of the temperate zones — the grand pages of 

 the great Stone Book, spread out upon every continent, bear 

 witness in unmistakable characters to the increase of land 

 surface. 



