CONTOUR OF THE COUNTRY. 235 
removed by being melted and run off as water, the land 
rose to its present altitude. In regard to the contour of a 
country which has passed through some such change of 
altitude, it is stated by Sir John Herschel :— 
‘In the upheaval of any extensive tract of land from the 
sea, hollows fitted for lake-basins cannot fail to be left. If 
the upheaval be rude and paroxysmal, resulting in the 
formation of mountain chains, and accompanied with frac- 
ture and dislocation of the strata, such hollows will be 
How extraordinary the scene we have here unfolded! Through all the wide solitude of 
the Pacific, from which uo tidings were wont to come, except of scattered tribes of 
savage people, or of new and rich aromas, we are now summoned to discern the manifest 
progress of the most stupendous changes to which our world can be subject ; mighty 
movements of its solid crust, here subsiding and carrying for ever from human sight the 
marvels of great continents, and, elsewhere, promising the birth of new ones, amidst 
the deepest silences of the ocean ’ 
And he goes on to say—‘ That there is no portion of these continents which has not 
been subject to such memorable revolutions. That the whole land now protruded 
above the waves, had long lain at the bottom of oceans, appears from the character and 
contents of all the sedimentary recks ; for while these demonstrate, by their structure, 
that they must have been deposited by the agency of superincumbent waters, they 
envelope, now turned into stone, the remains of the sea-creatures that lived on the floor 
of the ocean, when the stratum of mud, or sand, or lime, was there spread out, which 
through the course of ages has become hardened into a corresponding rock. To dwell 
on a consideration, at the present time so generally understood and accepted, does not 
appear needful; but a careful analysis of the rocks of these continents has revealed 
another feature in the history of the changes which have affected the Earth by far too 
remarkable to be passed slightly by. Not only have our existing masses of land been 
subjected to a process of emersion, such as those tracts in the Pacific are undergoing, 
by whose gradual rise novel forms and combinations are visibly preparing, but it is cer- 
tain that they have experienced many and signal oscillations, now sinking beneath the 
sea, now reappearing, so that those grand metamorphoses of the surface of our Planet 
seem almost without limit or end. Look in illustration to the south-eastern counties of 
England. We discern there, as characteristic of extensive localities, three singular for- 
mations of considerable thickness. 
‘The lower and upper formations are marine, that is, they contain solely the relics of 
creatures that lived in the sea; while the middle one, consisting of three distinct beds, 
is entirely, or very nearly, of fresh-water origin. Now, observe the significance of this 
curious intermixture.. When the stratum No. 1 was deposited, it is indubitable that 
the whole wide surface over which it is diffused must have been the floor of the ocean. 
On the deposition of No. 2, which required the agency of a lake or river, the first bed 
must have arisen from its previous depths, and constituted part of the dry land. Ages 
had then passed,—the beds of No. 2 being meanwhile formed in quiet and perfect 
order ; and, at the close of this period, the land must again have sunk, and received 
from the ocean the superincumbent chalk of No. 3, which by one more of those stupen- 
dous revolutions has since been heaved up, so as now to constitute the bright cliffs of 
that portion of our island. Two grand movements of upheaval, and one at least of sub- 
sidence, are thus demanded for the explanation of this mere leaf in the annals of the 
earth ; and a minuter inquiry wouid only add to the variety, and the better impress 
the majesty of these changes. The intermediate fresh-water formation, for instance 
(the Wealden), was the estuary of a river rivalling the Ganges, which there delivered its 
volume of water into the ocean. Now that river must have drained some continent of 
magnitude corresponding,—a continent (as we learn from the scattered bones buried’ 
in the mud of its estuary) filled with life in some of its strangest and most gigantic. 
developments; and that has wholly disappeared ; carried downwards, either entirely 
or in parts, by the subsidence which prepared .the Wealden to receive the chalk. __ . 
