MODERN" STUDY OF THE OCEAN. 



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is still much to be learned. Among the ancients it was gene- 

 rally declared in their cosmogonies that the solid portions of 

 the world were produced by the ocean. " Water is the chief 

 of all," says Pindar ; " the earth is the daughter of ocean," is 

 the mythological statement common to the primitive nations. 

 Though this poetical expression was merely based upon a 

 vague tradition, and can hardly be taken as the result of any 

 methodical study of the earth, yet modern science tends to 

 show that it is really true. The ocean has produced the solid 

 land. The study of geology, the skilled inspection of the 

 various strata of the land — -the rocks, sand, clay, chalk, con- 

 glomerates — proves that the materials of the continents have 

 been chiefly deposited at the bottom of the sea, and raised to 

 their present position by the chemical or mechanical agencies 

 which are constantly at work in the vast labratory of naturti 

 Many rocks, as for instance the granites of Scandinavia, which 

 were previously believed to have been projected in a molteii 

 and plastic state from the interior of the earth, where they hf d 

 been subjected to the action of the intense heat supposed to exist n 

 the centre of the earth, are now supposed to be in reality ancient 

 sedimentary strata, slowly deposited by the sea, and upheaved 

 by the contraction of the crust, or by some other force of up- 

 heaval acting from the centre. Upon the sides of mountains, or 

 on their summits, now thousands of feet above the level of 

 the ocean, unquestionable traces of the action of the sea can 

 be found And the scientific observer of to-day sees all 

 about him evidences that the immense work of the creation of 

 continents, commenced by the sea in the earliest periods of 

 . I me, is to-day continuing without relaxation or intermission, 

 uid with such energy that even during the short course of & 

 single life great changes can be seen to have been produced. 

 Here and there a coast, subject to the beating of the serf, is 

 seen to be slowly undermined, disintegrated, worn down and 

 carried away, while in another place the material is deposited 



