326 



THE SYSTEM OF TERRESTRIAL CHANGES 



[Ch. XIV. 



The remainder of this work will be devoted to an investi- 

 gation of the changes now going on in the crust of the earth 

 and its inhabitants. The importance which the student will 

 attach to such researches will mainly depend on the degree of 

 confidence which he feels in the principles above expounded. 

 If he firmly believes in the resemblance or identity of the 

 ancient and present system of terrestrial changes, he will 



r 



egard every fact collected respecting the causes in diurnal 

 action as affording him a key to the interpretation of some 

 mystery in the past. Events which have occurred at the 

 most distant periods in the animate and inanimate world, 

 will be acknowledged to throw light on each other, and the 

 deficiency of our information respecting some of the most 

 obscure parts of the present creation will be removed. For 

 as, by studying the external configuration of the existing 

 land and its inhabitants, we may restore in imagination the 

 appearance of the ancient continents which have passed 

 away, so may we obtain from the deposits of ancient seas and 

 lakes an insight into the nature of the subaqueous processes 



now in operation, and of many forms of organic life, which, 

 though now existing, are veiled from sight. Rocks, also, 

 produced by subterranean fire in former ages, at great depths 

 in the bowels of the earth, present us, when upraised by 

 gradual movements, and exposed to the light of heaven, with 

 an image of those changes which the deep-seated volcano 

 may now occasion in the nether regions. Thus, although we 

 are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to 

 a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, 

 the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond 

 the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of 

 indefinite ages before the creation of our race, and is not 

 even withheld from penetrating into the dark secrets of the 

 ocean, or the interior of the solid globe ; free, like the spirit 

 which the poet described as animating the universe, 



ire per omnes 



Terrasque, traetusque maris, ecelumque profundiim. 



it 

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