128 



SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



witnessed a greater profusion of life than the Hamilton. 

 The germs of being were thickly strewn over every part 

 of the ocean's floor. Chambered shells were on the wane ; 

 but Brachiopods and new forms of corals sprang forth in 

 exuberant growth, and we pick their fossil forms to-day, 

 like nuts, from the dried ocean mud. 



Another aeon passes ; the empire of the sea crumbles be- 

 fore the conquest of the land, and we add next the belt of 

 the "Chemung group" to the growing margins of the land. 

 Toward the west the bottom of the sea experiences at this 

 time but little change of level, and the Chemung sediments 

 abide another epoch to receive upon their backs the sands 

 and mud of the " Waverly group ;" eastward, however, 

 new land is made by an extensive uplift of the sea bottom. 

 Thus the Empire State is almost completed; Wisconsin 

 has taken her place ; the centre of Michigan is occupied by 

 an inland sea. The great ocean washes the southeastern 

 shores of Ohio, and wild waves career over the future plan- 

 tations of the prairie farmer in Illinois. Some parts of 

 Eastern Iowa, and Missouri, and Arkansas, and Northern 

 Texas begin to emerge, but the boundless waste of Pacific 

 waters is still at work upon the materials of Kansas, and 

 Nebraska, and the regions beyond. 



Among the accumulated treasures of this epoch, behold 

 the first vestiges of an arborescent vegetation ! All before 

 this had been fucoidal in its characters.. Here we find, im- 

 bedded in the friable sandstone, some stems of trees — pieces 

 of drift-wood floated from some neighboring shore, and, like 

 the dove of Noah, bearing us tales of the vegetation upon 

 the land. The sandstones of Southern New York inclose 

 such records of the vegetal life of the Chemung. Corre- 

 sponding sandstones in the distant peninsula of Gaspe, 

 Canada East, have been constrained to yield similar testi- 

 mony from their locked and ancient archives — thanks to 



