THE. HUM AN SPECIES. 91 



THE PACIFIC. 



THE Pacific and South Seas are likewise replete with 

 evidence of great geographical mutations ; some have 

 already been noticed, and the active progress of coral 

 reefs proves the vast proportion of space beneath the 

 waves, either still sinking lower, or again t in a re- 

 ascending state. Volcanic cones, far from continents, 

 like flaming beacons at sea, towards the South Pole, as 

 Hecla is in the north, may be elaborating elements for 

 future geogonies, or heave up regions now sunken, on 

 the southern side of the equator, more particularly 

 where a peculiar zoology, living and fossil, appears to 

 point out that one existed at an anterior period ; and, 

 by the evidence of the great Struthionidae, such as 

 Dinornis, only recently extinct, that animals of such 

 bulk were not originally confined to islands not larger 

 than New Zealand ; which, moreover, is replete with 

 craters nearly all dormant. 



THE foregoing statements have been submitted, "in this 

 place, somewhat more at length than the nature of the 

 present volume would seem to warrant ; but, that we 

 apprehend, no view of the primeval history of Man can 

 be complete, without reference to the conditions of 

 existence which obtained in the first more calamitous 



