428 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
years, and \vc think tlicsc natural causes and effects arc tlie same, past, present, 
and to come.' Forgetting- tliat our last three thousand years have passcil 
(l«ietly along a parallel with the C([uator, and will so continue until the peri- 
helion point shall arrive at eleven and three-quarter degrees of south decliua- 
tiou, when its parallelism becomes angular, in which angularity the ocean 
follows towards the equator, and then our tranqiality ends. 15ut what arc 
three thousand years of repose ? Not one-fourth of the thirteen thousand uLne 
luindred and ninety years. It may api)ear to us, because we have three tliou- 
sand years of comparative quiet, that it must continue so ; and so it will for 
perhaps three thousand yeai s longer, after which, we may, with some degree of 
certainty, assure our friendly geologists that our tranquil state in the northern 
licmisphere will cease. It has about eleven thousand years of comparative 
repose, and has, as above stated, about three thousand more years to expect, 
after which posterity must think of travelling southwards, as the antediluvians 
had to do northwards about six thousand years ago; and no doubt our pos- 
terity of the northern hemisphere will be compelled to abandon their lands for 
the southern, as their ancestors were forced to do towards the northern hemi- 
sphere ; for, as already remarked, in about three thousand years after the pre- 
sent, we shall have timely warning given us, by the gradual advance of the 
oeeau towards the equator, and its ultimate inundation of our northern lands. 
Hence it is evident that these advances and retreats of the ocean uniformly in 
twenty thousand nine hundred and eighty-four years are the sufficient and chief 
great causes of the change, and of the otherwise unaccountable appearances 
which are presented to our view when we investigate the various strata and 
j)ereeive these oceanic wrecks. What an ample and clear explanation is then 
afforded of the singular intermix:ture thus found of varied organic remains, of 
}narine and land animals, vegetables, &e., and their amazingly varied matrixes 
and beds ! These intermixtures, &e., clearly prove how often they have been 
turned over and over again ; and how deposits have been alternately formed on 
land, in seas, lakes, or fresh and salt water, and they likewise confirm how 
often the perihelion has made those important revolutions, from which s])ring 
such momentous and surprising results, and which will necessarily produce the 
same effects ad infinitum" 
The author repeats that he can perceives no great evil or misfortune in these 
))hysieal changes, which are not abrupt, as timely warning is given for one 
thousand seven hundred and forty-nine years, while the perihelion is passing- 
through Pisces, and the sciences of astronomy and navigatio)i, with the art of 
ship-building will give our posterity every means of foreseeing and avoiding 
the danger. 
in respect to the obliquity of the ecliptic, our author thus speculates. " If 
we treat it astronomically, we imagine that it might have originally had an 
angidar expansion of forty-five degrees, or even ninety degrees, and constantly 
diminished to its present rate, or perhaps became less angular at the last 
catastrophe or convulsion of the earth's sui-face. On the contrary, if our 
speculations take a mechanical direction, we can imagine that the immense 
breadth of land of the Asiatic continent, with the inunense masses of lofty 
mountains, formed by the chain of the Caucasian, Tartarian, and Himalayan 
mountains, might drag or pull over the earth's pole in au easterly direction, 
and become at once the meridian of both poles of the equator and ecliptic, 
which are about twenty-three degrees twenty-eiglit minutes aj)art, and if our 
earth had not this iacliualion, its jiole would ))robably have been located at 
Baflin's Eay, for, according to the observations of Captain Sir James lioss, the 
]nagnetie pole was observed in seventy degrees five minutes seventeen seconds 
north latitude, and ninety-six degrees forty-six minutes forty-five seconds west 
longitude. With regard to the diminution of the ecliptic angle, we conceive 
