848 



/. D. Dana on the Plan of Development, fyc. 



tures of the globe were educed. The mountains of the earth at 

 last stood at their full altitude, having gained some thousands 

 of feet since the Tertiary ; and rivers, true offspring of the moun- 

 tains, taking their size from the size of the mountain ranges, 

 were sent on renovating missions over the breadth of the conti- 

 nents. Indeed, the upper terraces of the rivers show that dur- 

 ing the Post-tertiary, these interior waters had an extent and 

 power vastly beyond what the streams now exhibit an extent 

 which is yet unexplained, unless attributable, as I have sug- 

 gested, to the declining snows of a glacier epoch. In their 

 strength, they deeply channeled the hills, and wrought out much 

 of the existing sublimity of mountain architecture. There was 

 the elimination of beauty and of immediate utility in every 

 stroke of those later waters, in striking contrast with the earlier 

 operations of rock-making and mountain-lifting ; for those very 

 conditions, those special surface details, were developed, that 

 were most essential to the pastoral and agricultural pursuits with 

 which man was to commence his own development, while that 

 grandeur was impressed on the earth that should tend to raise 

 his soul above its surface. 



This transfer of the process of development from the extremi- 

 ties to the more northern regions, thence evolving these new and 

 more refined qualities of inorganic nature and humanizing the 

 earth, has a parallel in organic growth ; for the extremities are 

 finished and adult size attained before the head and inner being 

 are fully perfected. The analogy is fanciful ; yet it is too obvi- 

 ous a parallelism to be left unsaid on that account.* 



* I have alluded on a former page to an analogy between the progress of the 

 earth and that of a germ. In this, there is nothing fanciful ; for there is a general 

 law, as is now known, at the basis of all development, which is strikingly exhibited 

 even in the earth's physical progress. The law, as it has been recognized, is simply 

 this -.—Unity evolving multiplicity of parts through successive individualizations 

 proceeding from the more fundamental onward. 



The earth in igneous fusion, had no more distinction of parts than a germ. After- 

 wards, the continents, while still beneath the waters, began to take shape. Then, 

 as the seas deepened, the first dry land appeared, low, barren, and lifeless. Under 

 slow intestine movements and the concurrent action of the enveloping waters, the 

 dry land expanded, strata formed, and as these processes went on, mountains by 

 degrees rose, each in its appointed place. Finally in the last stage of the develop- 

 ment, the Alps and Pyrenees and other heights received their majestic dimensions 

 and the continents were finished out to their very borders. 



Again, as to the history of fresh waters. — The first waters were all salt, and the 

 oceans one, the waters sweeping around ths sphere in an almost unbroken tide. 

 Fresh waters left their mark only in a rain-drop impression. Then the rising lands 

 commenced to mark out the great seas, and the incipient continents were at times 

 spread with fresh-water marshes into which rills were flowing from the slopes 

 around. As the mountains enlarged, the rills changed to rivers, till at last the rivers 

 also were of majestic extent, and the Continents were throughout active with the 

 busy streams, at work channeling mountains, spreading out plains, opening lines 

 of communication, and distributing good every where. 



Again, the first climates were all tropical. But when mountains and streams 

 were attaining their growth, a diversity of climate, (essential to the full strength of 



