242 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



has varied from the very moment it "appeared" or in other words 

 arose from beneath the "waters," and each successive geological era 

 comprised within itself countless changes in this relative distribution 

 of Land and "Water, and many marked variations in the climatal 

 agencies effecting the one, and in the tides and currents which sorted 

 the shingle, sands, and finer sediments formed by the other. If proof 

 of the truth of this be required we have but to pause before any bed 

 of conglomerate, in any strata from the lowest to the most recent, 

 and we have there presented to us a clear evidence of a period of 

 local destruction in rocks previously formed and consolidated, and a 

 consequent reproduction out of their disintegrated masses ; but should 

 we find in that conglomerate a block of a still older conglomerate, 

 and this, on examination, was found to contain pebbles derived from 

 ancient fossiliferous rocks in which we discover the remains of shells 

 and corals, we clearly see that the process of formation, consolida- 

 tion, destruction and reproduction has been going on during count- 

 less ages before the formation of the conglomerate we first examined. 

 In vain we try to shape each link of this apparently endless chain of 

 past cause and effect and effect and cause, till our imaginings are lost 

 in what has aptly been termed "the past eternity." 



That the earth has been subjected to marked climatal changes 

 during past geological times is proved by its fossils. Beds of coal 

 similar in every respect to those found in Europe and containing 

 what we believe to be tropical plants, are found in what is now the 

 Arctic Eegions, S.E. of Melville Island, and we have evidence to show 

 that similar changes of climate obtained long before the Carboni- 

 ferous period, as Upper Silurian rocks are found at the N. W. ex- 

 tremity of Baffin's Bay. 



In the study of geology there is this great truth, which the 

 inquirer must never lose sight of, that the sea is the great superficial 

 laboratory of the earth ; the true Letlie in which is plunged the 

 newly-made soul of matter, wherein it loses as it were the conscious- 

 ness of its past state of being. The sea, ever destroying, ever creating, 

 is a type of the Great First Cause, and the only permanent and un- 

 alterable constituent of matter. 



The laws determining the physical changes which modify the 

 outline and condition of the solid portion of the globe hold good up 

 to tlio present liour ; and though these changes are so gradual that 

 tlio sliort space of human record is capable of pointing out only 

 tlieir most trivial results, yet in the lapse of cycles of ages, altera- 



