rding to the nature, the condition, or the situation
of the objects; nevertheless they are wrought in some time or other.

"To nature, time is nothing, and it never presents a difficulty; she
always has it at her disposal, and it is for her a means without
limit, with which she has made the greatest as well as the least
things.

"The changes to which everything in this world is subjected are
changes not only of form and of nature, but they are changes also of
bulk, and even of situation.

"All the considerations stated in the preceding chapters should
convince us that nothing on the surface of the terrestrial globe is
immutable. They teach us that the vast ocean which occupies so great
a part of the surface of our globe cannot have its bed constantly
fixed in the same place; that the dry or exposed parts of this
surface themselves undergo perpetual changes in their condition, and
that they are in turn successively invaded and abandoned by the sea.

"There is, indeed, every evidence that these enormous masses of
water continually displace themselves, both their bed and their
limits.

"In truth these displacements, which are never interrupted, are in
general only made with extreme and almost inappreciable slowness,
but they are in ceaseless operation, and with such constancy that
the ocean bottom, which necessarily loses on one side while it gains
on another, has already, without doubt, spread over not only once,
but even several times, every point of the surface of the globe.

"If it is thus, if each point of the surface of the terrestrial
globe has been in turn dominated by the seas--that is to say, has
contributed to form the bed of those immense masses of water which
constitute the ocean--it should result (1) that the insensible but
uninterrupted transfer of the bed of the ocean over the whole
surface of the globe has given place to deposits of the remains of
marine animals which we should find in a fossil state; (2) that this
translation of the ocean basin should be the reason why the dry
portions of the earth are always more elevated than the level of the
sea; so that the old ocean bed should become exposed without being
elevated above the sea, and without consequently giving rise to the
formation of mountains which we observe in so many different regions
of the naked parts of our globe."

Thus littoral shells of many genera, such as P