Miscellaneous Intelligence. 133 
eal mixture, partly in chemical solution, to promote the development of 
later formations, forming new continents, etc.; just as a portion of the 
seed (the albumen) and the food-yolk of the egg go to nourish the ex- 
pauding germ. 
| “The separation of continents typifies the propagation by off-shoots, 
or artificially by cuttings, in plants; and seems to yesemble the fissiparous 
: mode of reproduction observed among the lowest animals. In some of 
the earlier cataclysms, we have the type of the ruptured Graafian vesicles, 
while at a final convulsive deluge, the period when the Western Conti- 
adom. 
* But the analogy may be carried much farther: the earth, like man, 
has its mountain masses giving stability to the length and sometimes Ps 
of cells around a centre, or as the earliest animals partake of the radial 
When an abundant supply of carbon has been furnished for the 
stowth and subsequent decay ‘of vegetation on the earth’s surface, we 
“ have the type of an extra-uterine nourishment. | 
We have the coal period forming its vast layers of carbonaceous de- 
Posits, which, by slow chemical action under a portion of the earth 
great centre of circulation, the heart, as the small streams unite into 
int i carry the dissolved materials to the great deltas, and finally 
“4 fs 
“Turning our attention first to the Western Continent, we find, as just 
tated, the smaller streams anastomosing, (as the veins do to form the 
ee) and at last discharging the chief waters of North America, 
by the Mississippi, into the Gulf of Mexico; while the Orinoco, Amazon, 
oo de la Plata send the jnosculated waters of South America also 
» “Ward the same gulf, through the currents tending to the Caribbean Sea. 
“Here we have the type of that venous or vitiated blood, which is now 
mto the great central heart, and thence propelled, in the Gulf- 
