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from above it, would increase in height in comparison with the depth of the valleys, and would as much divide the one hollow into two valleys or waterslopes, as the heights between the sources of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence divide the valley of the Mississippi from the valley of the St. Lawrence.*

Laterally, each cliff which had been kept a precipice by the action of the sea at its foot, would instantly begin to accumulate a talus there, and, directly as its softness, the cliff would be changed into a sloping hill-side by disintegration and the wash of rain. For as long as the sea acts on the foot of a cliff it remains a precipice; because the undermining water acts more rapidly than disintegration and wash, and clears away all that falls. Abstract this power, even by the accidental accumulation of a bank of travelling shingle, and the cliff has a tendency to conform to the slope of the hill above it, that is, to the wash of the hill above it, both at the brow of the cliff and at its foot. For what is washed down the hill and off its brow

* Keith Johnston talks of the plain of the MississippiMackenzie.' He might as well talk of the plain of the RhineDanube, the centre of which plain would be the plain of the Alps. This would be childish enough, but in the case of the Mississippi and Mackenzie the vast valley of the Sascatchewan containing 360,000 square miles runs between them, from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson's Bay, at right angles to the socalled 'plain of the Mississippi-Mackenzie.'

will lie at the foot of the cliff as a shelving bank, and what was the mid-cliff gradually becomes the sole cliff. But this will eventually disappear into one slope.

If the top of the cliff is table land, or slopes from the cliff, the cliff will waste much more slowly by disintegration and the action of the elements. But supposing such a cliff to be all of the same material, I think the brow has a tendency to disappear most quickly, possibly from a freer access and action of rain-water in disintegration, and possibly also from roots inserting themselves in crevices, and by turgescence detaching blocks bodily. Besides this, roots in decay generate carbonic acid, which is a great disintegrator. Another reason may be that the wash from above, which erodes and degrades the brow, is shot clear of lower parts, as in the case of a waterfall.

In addition to this, the entire surface of these former cliffs and present hill-sides would be laid in ridge and furrow. They would be grooved throughout by rain with small incipient valleys.

And if it may be said that the apexes and ridges of mountains are not formed by rain, I answer that they are at least transformed by rain. That is, their surface is formed by rain. The mountain top and brow are the very places to see

this universal artificer begin his work. The longitudinal trunk river valley expatiates into as many myriads of valleylet extremities, as a tree does into leaves; and if we pursue its leader or any one of its side branches to the end, that end is on the mountain-top. In porous subsoils indeed the river does not go near the top, but the rain valley does. But whether the landscape be savage or serene, water is the artist who painted it. Water formed the subjects alike of Salvator and of Claude. It is to water that we are indebted for the features which enchant us, whether we linger mid 'the dread magnificence' of Alpine ravines or gaze entranced from Windsor Terrace over

that schoolboy spot

We still remember, though we're there forgot.

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WHICH HAVE EXISTED.
WHOLE SURFACE OF THE EARTH INTO THE SEA. POSSIBILITY
THAT COAL MAY BE ALWAYS FORMING. DRIFT AND ALLUVIUM,
OR DEPOSIT ON DRY LAND.' THESE MODERN BEDS CONTAIN
EXTINCT ANIMALS. THE SAME FLOODS WHICH FORM THE
DRIFT BEDS STOCK THEM WITH LAND ANIMALS. MAMMALIA
AND MAN MIGHT HAVE EXISTED IN THE SILURIAN PERIOD,
FOR WHAT WE KNOW. DENUDATION AND DEPOSIT PERVADE
THE WHOLE TERRAQUEOUS GLOBE. BUT NO STRATUM CAN BE
UNIVERSAL OVER THE GLOBE. AS ALL STRATA HAVE LAND
FOSSILS, ALL STRATA HAVE BEEN FORMED FROM THE
DEBRIS OF LAND. THAT IS, BY SUBAERIAL NOT SUBMARINE
DENUDATION. SURFACE FLINTS THE RESIDUUM OF DENUDA-

THIS SUPPOSES A WASH FROM THE

TION.

ALL geologists argue as if the organic remains found in strata were a perfect history of the different species of animals and plants which have in succession existed on the globe from the beginning. But how can this be, unless there is now, and for ever has been, a wash from the surface of the earth into the sea?

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Humboldt says, the fossiliferous strata contain entombed within them the floras and faunas of bygone times.' In regard to 'vertebrated animals, the most ancient of these are, as we have already seen, fishes; next in the order of succession of formation, passing from the lower to the upper, come reptiles and mammalia.' After enumerating the strata from the most ancient to the most recent tertiary beds, he says, then follow in the alluvial beds the colossal bones of the mammalia

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of the primitive world.' In the summary he

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alludes to the colossal bones of antediluvial mammalia in the upper alluvium ;' and later he alludes to the sudden destruction of so great a number of colossal vertebrata in the diluvial period.' Would he have us believe that there was no room for them in the ark? No admittance for Theria or Sauria beginning with Mega or Macro?

But though I accept this universal opinion of geologists as a testimony to the everlasting wash of the land into the sea, I cannot think that a perfect history of all the organisations which have existed would result, even if we could see every fossil which the earth contains.

Except lake deposits, all strata are formed in the sea. Now we might almost say that all remains of land animals must perish utterly before

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