sand and gravel, would for ever have remained beneath the surface of the water, had not other forces been subsequently employed to raise them into dry land: these forces appear to have been the same expansive powers of heat and vapour which, having caused the elevation of the first raised portions of the fundamental crystalline rocks, continued their energies through all succeeding geological epochs, and still exert them in producing the phenomena of active volcanos; phenomena incomparably the most violent that now appear upon the surface of our planet.[1]
The evidence of design in the employment of forces, which have thus effected a grand general purpose, viz. that of forming dry land, by elevating 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 stratified rocks, which are destitute of organic remains (see Pl. 1.—section 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It is immaterial to the present question, whether they were formed (according to the theory of Hutton) from the detritus of the earlier granitic rocks, spread forth by water into beds of clay and sand; and subsequently modified
- ↑ "The fact of great and frequent alteration in the relative level of the sea and land is so well established, that the only remaining questions regard the mode in which these alterations have been effected, whether by elevation of the land itself§ 'or subsidence 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 connexion of these movements with the operations of volcanos, 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 inquiry, as almost to demonstrate that these have been the causes by which those great revolutions were effected; and that although the action of the inward forces which protrude the land has varied greatly in different 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.
