Des] AND SYMBOLS. 85 



Destruction and Renovation Principles of Nature. 



The uniformitarian, who would explain every natural event 

 in the earliest periods by reference to the existing conditions 

 of being, is stopped at the foundation-stones of the great 

 natural edifice, each storey of which has been inhabited by dif- 

 ferent creatures. Nature herself, in short, speaks to him through 

 her ancient monuments, and tells him that, though she has 

 worked during all ages on the same general principles of de- 

 struction and renovation of the surface, there were formerly dis- 

 tributions of land vastly different in outline from those which 

 now prevail The primeval sediments were penetrated by out- 

 bursts of great volumes of igneous matter from the interior, the 

 violence of which is made manifest by many clear evidences. 

 Fractures in the crust of the earth caused by earthquakes that 

 suddenly removed masses to positions far above or beneath their 

 previous levels were necessarily productive of such powerful 

 translations of water as abraded and destroyed solid materials, 

 and spread them out over continents, or altogether swept them 

 away by operations infinitely surpassing any changes of which 

 the historical era affords examples. We could cite the works 

 of many eminent writers for numerous evidences of the grander 

 intensity of causation in former epochs, by which gigantic 

 stratified masses were sometimes inverted, or so wrenched, 

 twisted, and broken as to pass under the very rocks out of 

 which they were formed. The traveller amid the Alps and 

 other mountain-chains will there see clear and unmistakable 

 signs of such former catastrophes, each of which resulted from 

 fractures utterly inexplicable by reference to any of those puny 

 oscillations of the earth which can be appealed to during his- 

 torical times. si. 



Elements that Wait for Destruction. 



Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the prairies or sa- 

 vannahs from the pampas and llanos is that the dryness in the 

 former is never sufficiently severe to destroy vegetation, as is 

 the case in the latter. But the herbs and grasses often grow 

 so dry in summer that the most trivial accident, such as a 



