46 WASTE AND RECONSTRUCTION. 



is usually accompanied by the earthquake, which fractures 

 and dislocates the solid crust, uplifting one portion and 

 depressing another, submerging one area beneath the waters 

 and elevating another into dry land. Unlike the volcano, 

 the earthquake produces no direct change on the character 

 of the rocks ; but it is the great diversifier of the earth's 

 surface, creating new irregularities, and as a consequence 

 interfering with the action of the atmospheric and aqueous 

 forces that operate on that surface, as well as with the dis- 

 tribution of the life by which it is peopled. But beyond 

 the earthquake and volcano, with all their minor accompani- 

 ments of hot-springs, mud-springs, and the like, there seems 

 to be another and still more gigantic, though silent, mani- 

 festation of vulcanic power. We allude to those gradual 

 uprises and depressions of portions of the earth's surface 

 those crust-motions, if we may so speak by which certain 

 regions, like the shores of Scandinavia, Spitzbergen, and 

 Siberia, are being slowly raised above the sea-level, and other 

 regions, like the western coast of Greenland and that of the 

 Southern States of America, as slowly depressed beneath it. 

 Many countries, and our own islands among the rest, are 

 marked by lines of ancient sea-beach, denoting uprise above 

 the waters ; and could we only see beneath the ocean, we 

 believe there are other regions equally marked by terraces 

 of depression. There is no other power save Yulcanism, or 

 internal heat-force, to which we can ascribe these upheavals 

 and depressions of the crust ; but be this as it may, there 

 can be no doubt of such oscillations, and that they form 

 one of the appointed means by which the waste and recon- 

 struction of our continents are held in equilibrium, and new 

 distributions of sea and land accomplished. 



The effect of these various agencies the atmospheric, 

 aqueous, organic, chemical, and igneous is thus not only to 

 mould and modify the exterior, but at the same time to build 



