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Ck. V.] 



THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY. 



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which have flowed during the same period ; the dislocations, 

 subsidences, and elevations caused during earthquakes ; the 

 lands added to various deltas, or devoured by the sea, to- 

 gether with the effects of devastation by floods, and imagine 



that all these 

 form most ex 



must 



exalted ideas of the activity of the agents, and 

 the suddenness of the revolutions. Were an equal amount 

 of change to pass before our eyes in the next year, could we 

 avoid the conclusion that some great crisis of nature was 



at hand ? If geologists, therefore, have misinterpreted the 

 signs of a succession of events, so as to conclude that cen- 

 turies were implied where the characters imported thousands 

 of years, and thousands of years where the language of 

 Nature signified millions, thev could not, if thev reasoned 



om such false premises, come 



other con- 



clusion than that the system of the natural world had under- 

 gone a complete revolution. 



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great pyramid to 



•human 



if we were convinced 



same 



manner 



mountain 

 r small fr 



have been ele- 



time 



m 



movements 



times, 

 li may 



We know that during 



miles to the average height of about three feet. A 

 repetition of two thousand shocks, of equal violence, might 

 produce a mountain- chain one hundred miles long, and six 

 thousand feet high. Now, should one or two only of these 

 convulsions happen in a century, it would be inconsistent 

 with the order of events experienced bv the Chilians 



from 



times : but if the whole of them 



the next hundred years, the entire district must be depopu- 

 lated, scarcely any animals or plants could survive, and the 

 surface would be one confused heap of ruin and desolation. 



One consequence of undervaluing greatly the quantity of 

 past time, is the apparent coincidence which it occasions of 

 events necessarily disconnected, or which are so unusual, 



