738 GEOLOGY. 



element of its permanence as a fit residence for a human population ; and that our planet, 

 so preyed upon, rent and shattered by various agencies, has been steadily advanced by its 

 vicissitudes to an improved estate, developing a plan, the result of forethought and 

 design, grand in its outlines, beautiful in its execution, and benign in its results, reaching 

 far back into past eternity and anticipating the wants of future ages, by which the globe 

 has become an appropriate home for moral and intellectual beings, and now takes its 

 place in the universe among the performances of which it may be said 

 " These are thy glorious works ! Parent of good ! " 



While yet unfit for man, its intended lord, the earth was occupied with animals whose 

 natures were adapted to its condition, and with a gigantic vegetation, subsequently- 

 submerged, then entombed, and by chemical processes converted gradually into the beds 

 of coal, now in course of disinterment, contributing so largely to human improvement 

 and happiness, while formations of rock-salt, marble, limestone, and gypsum were 

 aggregated, to minister to the comfort and pleasure of foreseen nations of men, furnishing 

 materials for their dwellings, manure for their pastures, ornaments for their temples, and 

 savour to their food. Wild was the chaos, and confused the scene, which the strata, 

 elevated, disrupted, broken, and overturned, once presented to the eye : but system is 

 now seen in the disorder, and benevolent intention in the derangement. The tilting up 

 of the coal measures in troughs and basins has brought that mineral within reach of 

 human industry, which would have been inaccessible had it remained horizontally 

 disposed. By impervious alternating with pervious strata, the superficial rains are 

 received as into natural reservoirs, in the bosom of the earth, and are returned by 

 hydrostatic pressure in various directions to the surface, often pursuing a far wandering 

 course, percolating through chinks and fissures created by dislocation, ultimately appearing 

 in the form of springs, a machinery, of the action of which in the same localities we have 

 records extending back to the Homeric age. * But too for the play of elevating and 

 disrupting forces, shaping mountains and scooping out valleys, the land redeemed from 

 the ocean would have remained a dismal swamp, capable of supporting only the lowest 

 forms of life, like the great floridan morasses, instead of presenting that diversity of hill 

 and dale, glen, plain, and highland, essential to the economy of human life, and grateful 

 alike to rustic simplicity and cultivated taste. These are indications, only a few of the 

 number which might be named, yet sufficiently significant, which serve to establish the 

 conclusion, that our present habitation has been framed under the direction of Divine 

 Intelligence and Power. 



Barren Island, Gulf of Bengal. 



