east to west, and that this movement, by its continuity, displaced the
ocean basin and made it pass successively over all the surface of the
earth.

Then, in the third chapter, he asks if the basin of the sea has always
been where we now actually see it, and whether we find proofs of the
sojourn of the sea in the place where it is now absent; if so, what are
the causes of these changes. He reiterates his strange idea of a general
movement of the ocean from east to west, at the rate of at least three
leagues in twenty-four hours and due to the moon's influence. And here
Lamarck, in spite of his uniformitarian principles, is strongly
cataclysmic. What he seems to have in mind is the great equatorial
current between Africa and the West Indies. To this perpetual movement
of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean he ventures to attribute the
excavation of the Gulf of Mexico, and presumes that at the end of ages
it will break through the Isthmus of Panama, and transform America into
two great islands or two small continents. Not understanding that the
islands are either the result of upheaval, or outliers of continents,
due to subsidence, Lamarck supposed that his westward flow of the ocean,
due to the moon's attraction, eroded the eastern shores of America, and
the currents thus formed "in their efforts to move westward, arrested by
America and by the eastern coasts of China, were in great part diverted
towards the South Pole, and seeking to break through a passage across
the ancient continent have, a long time since, reduced the portion of
this continent which united New Holland to Asia into an archipelago
which comprises the Molucca, Philippine, and Mariana Islands." The West
Indies and Windward Islands were formed by the same means, and the sea
not breaking through the Isthmus of Panama was turned southward, and the
action of its currents resulted in detaching the island of Tierra del
Fuego from South America. In like manner New Zealand was separated from
New Holland, Madagascar from Africa, and Ceylon from India.

He then refers to other "displacements of the ocean basin," to the
shallowing of the Straits of Sunda, of the Baltic Sea, the ancient
subsidence of the coast of Holland and Zealand, and states that Sweden
offers all the appearance of having recently emerged from the sea, while
the Caspian Sea, formerly much larger than at present, was once in
communication with the Black Sea, and that some day the Straits of Sunda