THROUGH THE GEOLOGIST’S EYES 
south from it on each side of the continent, inclosing 
a vast interior sea between them. To end with, we 
have the finished continent of eight million or more 
square miles, of an average height of two thousand 
feet above the sea, built up or developed from and 
around these granite centres very much as the body 
is built up and around the bones, and of such pro- 
digious weight that some of our later geologists seek 
to account for the continental submarine shelf that 
surrounds the continent on the theory that the land 
has slowly crept out into the sea under the pressure 
of its own weight. And all this, — to say nothing 
of the vast amount of rock, in some places a mile 
or two in thickness, that has been eroded from the 
land surfaces of the globe in later geological time, and 
now lies buried in the seas and lakes, — we are told, 
is the contribution of those detached portions of : 
Archzan rock that first rose above the primordial 
seas. It is a greater miracle than that of the loaves 
and the fishes. We have vastly more to end with 
than we had to begin with. The more the rocks have 
been destroyed, the more they have increased; the 
more the waters have devoured them, the more they 
have multiplied and waxed strong. 
Either the geologists have greatly underestimated 
the amount of Archean rock above the waters at the 
start, or else there are factors in the problem that 
have not been taken into the account. Lyell seems 
to have appreciated the difficulties of the problem, 
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