CHARLES B. WARRING. 271 
state, therefore, such an arrangement as we see in our 
world was not due to the causes which I have assigned. 
But+this proves too much. It assumes that these causes 
should always result in the same, or similar forms. In 
the breaking up of an ice field, we say in general terms 
that the same forces are working everywhere, there is 
the current, and there are the winds, and there is the 
heat of the sun, yet in what an infinite variety of 
shapes, do these result. Scarce two pieces will be alike. 
So I should expect each globe would, in its cooling and 
solidifying, work out results peculiar to itself. 
I see nothing therefore in the condition of the moon, 
or of Mars, that opposes the explanation which I havé 
offered. Through some such process, I have little 
doubt, the grand features of our planet were brought 
into their present form. After that the cooling still 
went on. The bottom of the ocean basin after a suf- 
ficient time ceased to glow, the falling temperature 
caused the hitherto invisible, super-heated vapor to take 
visible form as clouds, or to descend in torrents, to be 
again and again flung back. The conflict went on, the 
oceans filling up, until at last, the waters spread over 
the vast plateaux, covering them all to the depth ofa 
few hundred feet. The hot seas grew cooler; life in 
its humblest forms was introduced, and the dry land 
only waited for the fiat that was to bid it rise above the 
waters. 
The rest of the story of the continents is told in the 
record left in the rocks, and geologists have deciphered 
it for us. 
In the discussion which followed this paper, par- 
ticipated in by Messrs. Dwight, Cooley and Stevenson, 
Prof. Dwight said that the theory of continent forma- 
tion just advanced, avowedly left out of consideration 
155 
