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 AVater, and many marked variations in the climatal 
agencies eftecting 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 ^ach link of tliis 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 X.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 Lethe 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 the present hour ; and though these changes are so gradual that 
the short space of human record is capable of pointing out only 
their most trivial results, yet in the lapse of cycles of ages, altera- 
