433 



CHAP. XXII. 



THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN. 



The Giant-Book of the Earth-rind. — The Sea of Fire. — Formatiou of a solid 

 Earth-crust by cooling. — The Primitive Waters. — First awakening of Life iu 

 the Bosom of the Ocean. — The Keign of the Saurians. — The future Ocean. 



The greatest of all histories, traced in mighty characters by 

 the Almighty himself, is that of the earth-rind. The leaves 

 of this giant volume are the strata which have been succes- 

 sively deposited in the bosom of the sea, or raised by volcanic 

 powers from the depths of the earth ; the wars which it relates 

 are the Titanic conflicts of two hostile elements, water and fire, 

 each anxious to destroy the formations of its opponent; and the 

 historic documents which bear witness to that ancient strife lie 

 before us. in the petrified or carbonified remains of extinct 

 forms of organic existence — the medals of creation. 



It is only since yesterday that science has attempted to un- 

 riddle the hieroglyphics in which the past history of our planet 

 reveals itself to man, and it stands to reason that in so difficult 

 a study truth must often be obscured by error; but although 

 the geologist is still a mere scholar, endeavouring to decipher 

 the first chapters of a voluminous work, yet even now the study 

 of the physical revolutions of our globe distinctly points out a 

 period when the molten earth wandered, a ball of liquid fire, 

 through the desert realms of space. In those times, so distant 

 from ours that even the wildest flight of imagination is unable 

 to carry us over the intervening abyss, the waters of the ocean 

 were as yet mixed with the air, and formed a thick and hazy 

 atmosphere through which no radiant sunbeam, no soft lunar 

 light, ever penetrated to the fiery billows of molten rock, which 

 at that time covered the whole surface of the earth. "What 

 pictures of desolation rise before our fancy, at the idea of yon 

 boundless ocean of fluid stone, which rolled from pole to pole 



