784 Tj?AxsACTTo?rs of the American Institute. 



affriiijlitcd populations fleeing from present wrath, without food or 

 shelter, to the mountains ; of the whole coast for several thousand 

 miles shaken with horrible commotions ; of direful subterranean vomi- 

 tings; of mephitic vapors filling all the air; of violent volcanic 

 eruptions ; while to complete the picture of horrors we have the 

 vision of the yawning earth rendering up its old-time burial places, 

 and disclosing the ghastly files of antique dead. It is no wonder 

 that in these seeming death-throes and mortal agonies of nature, men 

 should have read the omens oi that day of doom whereof the medi- 

 aeval hymn sings, 



" Dies Irae, dies ilia. 

 Solvet sajclum in favilla." 



"Well, where the uninstructed mind leaves off, fatigued at the 

 thought of so much calamity and puzzled to reconcile such scourges 

 with the conception of a benevolent Creator, science appears, labori- 

 ously studies these strange phenomena in terrestrial physics, succeeds 

 at length in connecting them with the general cosmic plan, and, last 

 triumph of divining power, boldly proclaims that the earthquake 

 itself, desolating as are sometimes its effects, is but a fresh illustration 

 of the great law of compensation, but an incident in a vast system of 

 action to which we owe the very ground we stand upon, and the very 

 land we inhabit. 



In order to make this clear, it will be necessary briefly to recall 

 some elementary facts in that science which investigates the changes 

 that have taken place, and are still taking place, in the structure of 

 our planet. 



It is a matter of observation that, everywhere around the coast line 

 of ever}' continent, the sea is constantly at work warring against the 

 land, crumbling away its edges, grinding it to powder, and carrying 

 the detritus asvay and spreading it out over its o\vn bottom. This 

 process is slow, but it goes on forever, and the result is, that, in time 

 (that is, in the secular time in which geology works), the structure of 

 continents is entirely worn away, and new ones are formed out of the 

 ruins of the former ones. It is quite certain that our present land 

 was formerly the bed of the sea, and that continental masses once 

 reared their forms where now rolls the "deep and dark blue ocean." 

 Now, rightly estimating this mighty power of the aqueous agents 

 which incessantly labor to reduce the inequalities of the earth's sur- 

 face to a level, it is easy to see that, if they went on unopposed, they 

 would at length " clear away and sj^read over the bed of the ocean all 



