154 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



the surface to a tropical temperature, and stimulated the 

 roots of the new-born vegetation, while from the tepid 

 waters the atmosphere was reeking with moisture, and 

 ever and anon dispensing its showers upon the green-car- 

 peted savanna. But, more than all, the food most grateful 

 to the growing plant was that abundant carbonic acid 

 whose presence in the atmosphere was the fatal bar to the 

 introduction of terrestrial animals. 



This scene of verdure was destined to short duration. 

 One of the ever-recurring oscillations of the earth's crust 

 sank the entire flora beneath the ocean's level. Pebbles, 

 and sand, and argillaceous mud were strewn over the layer 

 of prostrate vegetation, and the sea again held undisputed 

 sway over states once rescued from its dominion. 



Again the established order of Nature brought these 

 latest sediments to the surface, and again, as if by magic, 

 the fairy forms of a flowerless vegetation start up from the 

 germless sands. Generations of these new forms luxuriate 

 in the humid vales of another epoch — fix, in their woody 

 tissues, another portion of the superabundant plant-food 

 of the atmosphere, and then fall down to mingle with the 

 peaty accumulations of the period. 



Anon, another inundation devastates the scene, and 

 sands and clays are borne by the rushing tides, and the 

 dense growths of the recent jungle again disappear be- 

 neath another packing of silt and shingle, as a field of 

 marsh-grass is buried beneath the sand borne forward by 

 the summer overflow of a great river. Thus, perhaps, a 

 hundred times in the course of ages, the vegetable growths 

 of one epoch were entombed beneath the debris of a more 

 violent one. Occasionally the inundating waters assumed 

 the quiet habit of a deep and permanent sea. Then, that 

 no adaptation of inorganic nature might be wanting in the 

 answering aptitudes of the organic world, myriads of ma- 



