434 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



without meeting on its wide way anything but itself. Ever 

 and ever in the dark-red clouds shone the reflection of that vast 

 conflagration, witnessed only by the eye of the Almighty, for 

 organic life could not exist on a globe which exclusively obeyed 

 the physical and chemical laws of inorganic nature. 



But while the fiery mass with its surrounding atmosphere 

 was circling through the icy regions of ethereal space (the tem- 

 perature of which is computed to be lower than 60° E. below 

 freezing point), it gradually cooled, and its hitherto fluid surface 

 began to harden to a solid crust. Who can tell how many 

 countless ages may have dropped one after the other into the 

 abyss of the past, ere thus much was accomplished; for the 

 dense atmosphere constantly threw back again upon the fiery 

 earth-ball the heat radiating from its surface, and the caloric of 

 the vast body could escape but very slowly into vacant space ? 



Thus millions of years may have gone by before the aqueous 

 vapours, now no longer obstinately repelled by the cooling 

 earth-rind, condensed into rain, and, falling in showers, gave 

 birth to an incipient ocean. But it must not be supposed that 

 the waters obtained at once a tranquil and undisturbed posses- 

 sion of their new domain, for, as soon as they descended upon 

 the earth, those endless elementary wars began, which, with 

 various fortunes, have continued to the present day. 



As soon as the cooling earth-rind began to harden, it naturally 

 contracted, like all solid bodies when no longer subject to the 

 influence of expanding heat, and thus in the thin crust enor- 

 mous fissures and rents were formed, through which the fluid 

 masses below gushed forth, and, spreading in wide sheets over 

 the surface, once more converted into vapours the waters they 

 met with in their fiery path. 



But after all these revolutions and vicissitudes which opposed 

 the birth of ocean, perpetually destroying its perpetually re- 

 newed formation, we come at last to a period when, in conse- 

 quence of the constantly decreasing temperature of the earth-rind,, 

 and its increasing thickness, the waters at last conquered a 

 permanent abode on its surface, and the oceanic empire was 

 definitively founded. 



The scene has now changed ; the sea of fire has disappeared, 

 and water covers the face of the earth. The rind is still too- 

 thin, and the eruptions from below are still too fluid to form 



