34 



SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



stripped them of their sedimentary coverings, and they 

 stand revealed to the light of day. In other cases the ten- 

 sion of the upheaved strata has caused them to break along 

 the crest of a new-formed ridge. A chasm, miles in depth, 

 has opened down to the molten rock below. The fiery sea 

 has risen to the lips of the fissure., and even escaped in a 

 consuming and terrific overflow. In other cases such an 

 eruption has occurred beneath the waters of the sea, and 

 an entire oceanic basin has been converted into a seething 

 cauldron, in which fish and oysters, sea-urchins and lobsters, 

 corallines and sea-weeds, have been cooked together in a 

 Titanian dish of soup. Entire races have thus been ex- 

 terminated ; and, when the elements subsided again to a 

 quiet condition, the waters have been repeopled with count- 

 less multitudes of beings exactly adapted to the changed 

 circumstances of the earth — not repetitions of the forms 

 just exterminated, but original conceptions, new ideas from 

 the infinite resources of Nature ; and yet not fundamen- 

 tally different, but united to the old by such an identity of 

 fundamental plan as to convince us that the Intelligence 

 which presided in the former epoch survived the catastro- 

 phes which brought death to all terrestrial existence, and 

 continued to prosecute his unchanged purposes through 

 succeeding epochs. 



Fig. 10. Pingal's Cave in Staffa, composed of basaltic rocks of igneous origin. 



