TO STRATIFIED ROCKS. 43 
continued their energies through all succeeding 
geological epochs, and still exert them in pro- 
ducing the phenomena of active volcanoes; 
phenomena incomparably the most violent that 
now appear upon the surface of our planet.* 
The evidence of design in the employment of 
forces, which have thus effected a grand general 
purpose, viz. that of forming dry land, by ele- 
vating strata from beneath the waters in which 
they were deposited, stands independent of the 
truth or error of contending theories, respecting 
the origin of that most ancient class of strati- 
fied rocks, which are destitute of organic re- 
mains (see pi. 1. — section 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It is 
* ** The fact of great and frequent alteration in the relative level 
of the sea and land is so well established, that the only remain- 
ing questions regard the mode in which these alterations have 
been effected, whether by elevation of the land itself, or subsi- 
dence in the level of the sea? And the nature of the force 
which has produced them ? The evidence in proof of great and 
frequent movements of the land itself, both by protrusion and 
subsidence, and of the connection of these movements with the 
operations of volcanoes, is so various and so strong, derived from 
so many different quarters on the surface of the globe, and every 
day so much extended by recent enquiry, as almost to demon- 
strate that these have been the causes by which those great re- 
volutions were effected ; and that although the action of the in- 
ward forces which protrude the land has varied greatly in diffe- 
rent countries, and at different periods, they are now and ever 
have been incessantly at work in operating present change and 
preparing the way for future alteration in the exterior of the 
globe." — Geological Sketch of the Vicinity of Hastings, by Dr. 
Fitton, pp. 85, 86. 
