AND BRITISH CHANNEL. 489 



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Without further examples, however, we may Conciusioa. 

 for the present venture to assume, that the disin^ 

 tegrating and wearing effects of the waters of the 

 ocean are general. Whether we contemplate 

 them upon the land by the immediate and power- 

 ful impulse of the waves at the base of a rocky 

 shore, or, with the elegant and profound illustra- 

 tor of the Huttonian Theory, trace it in the form 

 of rain, rills and torrents, in the higher regions, 

 we shall find its effects all tending to one unvary- 

 ing principle, producing the degradation of the 

 land, and consequent tendency to filling up at the 

 bottom of the sea ; while, at the same time, from 

 the magnitude and extent of the surface, and other 

 occult causes, we are not aware of the elevation 

 of its level in any sensible degree. Nature seems 

 to have created a kind of compensating power to 

 counterbalance the seeming conflict of the ele- 

 ments of Earth and Water : for while the ocean 

 appears to be extending its surface, it seems also 

 probable that the quantity of its waters are upon 

 the whole lessened, and that part of them under- 

 goes a complete and permanent change of form 

 after the process of evaporation ; and that the 

 earthy particles continually accumulating at the 

 bottom of the sea, have a direct tendency not only 

 to preserve a uniform level, but even in some in- 

 stances to make the water overrun what we have 

 been accustomed to consider its boundary. If we 

 attentively inquire into the generality of the wast- 

 ing effects of the sea upon the margin of the land, 



lis 



