the coral growth is to show how much we have yet to learn 
with respect to the formations and the productions of the earth. 
The Gradual Formation of Islands and Continents. 
We have abundant evidence that the continents were not 
suddenly formed in their present shape: they gradually ac- 
quired it by progressive enlargement of the crystalline growth, 
and successive elevations and depressions. 
Australia presents a good example of this terrestrial action. 
The wharfs at Melbourne have risen six feet above the level 
of the sea during the last twenty years ; i. e., a rise at the rate 
of four inches per annum. The coast of Lacepede Bay has 
upheaved eighteen feet in the last sixty years, I his slow rate 
of upheaval, if it has continued during the last five hundred 
years, would be sufficient to raise two-thirds of Australia above 
the level of the sea. Indeed, a large portion of the interior 
of that country is still covered with lagoons of brackish water, 
and the whole of the low lands are strewed over with marine 
shells, similar to those seen on the bordering coast. 
The upheaval is by no means uniform. In Western Australia 
it is less than in the south-east, and in some parts on the north 
the land is subsiding. The flat country in Western Australia 
is strewed over with beds of oysters and cockle-shells, of the 
species still existing in the adjacent seas, and these are found 
in various terraces, from two to twenty feet above the level of 
high-water mark. The remains of a vessel of considerable 
tonnage have been discovered in a shallow estuary near Yasse 
Inlet, which is now shut out from the sea. New Zealand, 
like Australia, is likewise more or less covered by compara- 
tively recent beds of sands and gravel, containing marine shells 
similar to those now existing in the adjacent sea, occa- 
sionally mixed with the remains of terrestrial animals which 
have only recently become extinct, some of them having been 
seen alive in the last century. 
The elevation of Tasmania is comparatively of a recent 
date. A great portion of what now constitutes the site of 
Hobart Town had been under water at a not very remote period. 
This is proved by the extensive deposits of comminuted 
shells, all of recent species, which are met with, for miles, 
along the banks of the Derwent. Some of these deposits are 
at an elevation of upwards of one hundred feet above higli- 
water mark, and from fifty to one hundred yards from tne 
water’s edge, plainly showing thereby that a very recent ele- 
vation of the land has taken place. Judging from the condi- 
