scent
state, was succeeded by another irruption of the Ocean, which desolated
the land, and deposited the wrecks of its animal and vegetable
productions as now discovered in that formation. As yet, the geologian
maintains, man had not been called into existence, and therefore the
huge quadrupeds whose remains are found in the _faluns_, unmolestedly
ranged through the umbrageous wilds of nature absolute Lords of the
creation.

While the imagination is startled at the mystic nature of these
successive cosmological revolutions, it is no less puzzled to account
for the mighty causes which have effected them. The geologist however
has discovered in various parts of the world, the most positive evidence
of the upheaving and subsidence of immense tracts of territory, by the
stupendous operations of subterranean convulsions.

At Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight we have an extraordinary and complete
example of this description; in the remarkable _vertical_ position of
the beautiful and variously coloured arenose stratifications of the
plastic clay, we are enabled to discover that the ponderous substrata of
chalk were uplifted subsequently to the deposition of the tertiary
formation. And it would not be unreasonable to believe that the same, or
a similar convulsion, finally raised the lands of Touraine to their
present elevation above the level of the sea.

We have however in this country, as in almost every other part of the
globe, the most striking proofs of the mighty modifying operations of
the last grand _cataclysm_, the erosive power of whose turbulent waters
have denudated or scooped out deep vallies, frequently leaving--as
instanced in the faluns detached and widely scattered masses of
pre-existing formations, and heaping up their _debris_ in the vast and
variously shaped accumulations designated as diluvial deposits.

These popular speculations have been touched upon rather with the view
of exciting the attention of the curious, and inviting the disquisitions
of the able student of nature, than a desire to attach any absolute
importance to existing theories; for in a progressive science like
geology, new and amazing facts are continually being developed, and it
is only when an immensely increased accumulation of such existing
evidences has been thoroughly scrutinized by the penetrating and
comprehensive genius of a _Newton in geology_, that we can hope to
arrive at any thing approaching a correct explication of its rema