26 Principles of Geology. 
ing a long period, the sea flowed rich in living beings over rocks 
which contain no relics of life. At times tranquil, at intervals tu- 
multuous, this ocean, perhaps of elevated temperature, even in the 
northernmost regions, varied its deposits at different periods, yet pre- 
served among them a general conformity of arrangement, from the 
oldest to the most recent, and a similarity over large regions. ‘The 
aquatic animals and other remains, which are entombed in the earth, 
exhibit a long series of beings, whose origin dates from some of the 
earliest strata, and whose forms, differing according to the antiquity 
of the rocks, successively come nearer and nearer to the modern 
productions of the land and the ocean. During this process, at in- 
tervals, vegetable forests swept into estuaries, or lakes, furnished the 
materials of coal, and the intermitting action of submarine volcanoes 
frequently broke the consolidated strata, and formed basaltic and 
other overlying rocks. At times, too, more violent exertions, prob- 
ably o same cause, uplifted groups and ranges of mountains 
with great disruption and dislocation. Operations of the same kind 
are to this day continued, but so feebly,* that we commonly speak as 
if the causes which concurred to produce the crust of our planet, had 
ceased to exist. They appear, however, to have been gradually 
weakened, and when the last series of the secondary beds, partly 
marine, partly lacustrine, was deposited, a large portion of pre- 
consolidated rocks become tenanted by land animals. But again 
the waters returned and overflowed the inhabited world; removed 
rocks, excavated vallies, and destroyed the terrestrial inhabitants, 
from whose anatomical construction, as displayed in their remains, it 
may be inferred that the antediluvian face of the earth was like our 
own, diversified by lakes, and forests, and mountains. 
This transient flood retires from the 
the forest is clothed with foliage; birds 
the earth; the mountains gather clouds, rain falls, the streams flow 
down their new channels, the sea resumes its appointed boundary ; 
cliffs are wasted, low shores are extended, vallies are filled up, vol- 
Canoes are in action; nature revives again, and man, by contempla- 
tion of the phenomena, reads the awful history of his birth-place, 
gathers ideas of the immense agency exerted in the construction of 
the earth, compares this planet with the other members of the solar 
system, and views the solar system itself as only a small part of the 
immeasurable works of God! 
EPR E di mn. 
desolated continents ; again 
fly in air, and animals roam 
*“——. Absump tis per Jongum viribus evum. 
