434 PACIFIC OCEAN. 
another by Sanguir, and those of the Tarawan and Radack Islands, 
all of which are subordinates to main ranges. 
Since Mr. Hopkins has shown that there are two systems of fissures, 
at right angles with one another and mutually dependent, produced 
as a necessary result of the elevation of an elliptical area, we are not 
surprised at the rectangularity of intersecting lines in the Pacific. 
They belong to the system of results proceeding from the grand cause 
upon which the features of the ocean depend. ‘The transverse line, 
including New Zealand, the Kermadec Islands and the Tonga Group, 
(and which embraces in its course north, Samoa, Fanning’s Group and 
the Hawaiian Islands,) crosses nearly at right angles the central ellip- 
tical area of the ocean. 
From the various facts which have been presented, the early origin 
of the Pacific volcanoes or vents of eruption appears to be highly 
probable. We cannot rightly refer them all to a single era. The 
system in the arrangement of lines of islands, has not necessarily 
arisen from a cotemporaneous origin. On the contrary, it has rather 
proceeded, as the principles explained confirm, from a uniformity of 
origin and direction in the forces causing ruptures and displacements. 
We learn that the oceanic area has always been exerting tension late- 
rally by contraction ; and the identity of position between the central 
elliptical region of greatest subsidence, indicated by the trend of the 
islands, and that deduced for a late period from the coral reefs and 
islands, shows us that this area has preserved a singular uniformity 
of character, even from the epoch when its outlines first began to 
appear, till these recent times in geological history. Different frac- 
tures having a common direction, or constituting different parts of a 
curving range, may therefore be the result of distant ages. In other 
regions, the unequal progress of cooling may have changed somewhat 
the direction of tension, and therefore the striking uniformity seen in 
the Pacific is not everywhere to be expected. With all the irregula- 
rities, however, it is plainly perceived that the world has a system in 
its great features, the result of a single plan of development. 
It is obvious from the views offered, if we have not been wandering 
in error throughout, that the earth has reached its present condition 
by gradual progress from a state of prolonged igneous action through 
epochs of increasing quiet, interrupted by distant periods of violence, 
to the present time, when even the gentlest oscillations of the crust 
have almost ceased. 
