I06 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



its continuity, displaced the ocean basin and made it 

 pass successively over all the surface of the earth. 



Then, in the third chapter, he asks if the basin of 

 the sea has always been where we now actually see it, 

 and whether we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea 

 in the place where it is now absent ; if so, what are 

 the causes of these changes. He reiterates his strange 

 idea of a general movement of the ocean from east to 

 west, at the rate of at least three leagues in twenty- 

 four hours and due to the moon's influence. And 

 here Lamarck, in spite of his uniformitarian principles, 

 is strongly cataclysmic. What he seems to have in 

 mind is the great equatorial current between Africa 

 and the West Indies. To this perpetual movement of 

 the waters of the Atlantic Ocean he ventures to at- 

 tribute the excavation of the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 presumes that at the end of ages it will break through 

 the Isthmus of Panama, and transform America into 

 two great islands or two small continents. Not under- 

 standing that the islands are either the result of 

 upheaval, or outliers of continents, due to subsidence, 

 Lamarck supposed that his westward flow of the ocean, 

 due to the moon's attraction, eroded the eastern shores 

 of America, and the currents thus formed " in their 

 pfforts to move westward, arrested by America and by 

 {;he eastern coasts of China, were in great part diverted 

 towards the South Pole, and seeking to break through 

 a passage across the ancient continent have, a long time 

 since, reduced the portion of this continent which 

 united New Holland to Asia into an archipelago 

 which comprises the Molucca, Philippine, and Mariana 

 Islands." The West Indies and Windward Islands 



