24 [Assembly 



In these ocean- depths there is thus always in progress a pro- 

 cess the reverse of what takes place on land : in the one, there is 

 perpetual wearing away ; in the other, perpetual accumulation. 

 In the sea bottom are constantly forming layers upon layers of 

 sand, fine slime, or calcareous mud. In a few places, such as 

 near the mouths of great rivers, these accumulations go on 

 rapidly, but on the average their increase must be exceedingly 

 feloV; ibr the sea deposits can be foriiifed no faster than the waste 

 of the dry land furnishes material, and the avei-age filling up of 

 the bcean'g bed must be as slow as the average wearing down of 

 tfe continents. Slow as it is, however, it is uninterrupted. 

 Year after year, century after century, cycle after cycle it Con- 

 tinues, and new layers are added to the increasing pile in every 

 age. The deposits formed during this century overlie and cbii- 

 ceal those of the last ; belieath the latter, lie those of precediiig 

 ages ; arid at the base of all must be buried those of the firfet 

 periods of creation. 



But it is not only the inanimate dilst of earth which is thti^ 

 Carried into the great storehouse of the sea : there lie millions of 

 shells of a thousand kinds ; there the remains of innumerable 

 flshes and other forms of life which inhabit the waters, fall, to 

 settle into the oozy bottom ; thither float leaves and reeds atid 

 tree trunks, di-ifted from many shores ; there sink the skeletons 

 bi sea fowl and exhausted land birds, and the remains of drowned 

 quadrupeds swept out to sea by rivers. All these relics are there 

 slowly buried by the ever-settling sediment ; every layer contain- 

 ing the remains of such things as lived at the time it was formed 

 beneath the waters. Thus the bottom of the sea becomes a Great 

 Cemetery, in which are buried, by natural agencies, more or less 

 of the relics of every age of earth's history ; the deepest and 

 oldest layer of all containing the remains of the living things of 

 its primeval period, those higher in place containing relics of 

 proportionately later centuries, and the highest of all containing 

 the animal or vegetable forms which exist on earth at the present 

 day. 



If we cou Id gain access to this sea-bottom, and examine its 

 successive layers, gaining knowledge of the remains of greater 

 and greater antiquity as we penetrated deeper and deeper from 

 its surface, it is easily seen what perfect evidence we should have 

 of the past progress of the world, and how interesting would be 

 the revelations as to whether the living things of early ages weie 



