der's. And here it perished-its entire lineage perished. Not a solitary individual has survived; and there is not a living being upon all the earth, or in all the wide realm of the ocean, with which we may compare this anomalous vestige, and determine how it stood related to other beings. Not one, I said; but the faithful explorations of the forgotten zoologist have brought to light, perchance, a solitary family which has inherited the outré forms of this primeval ancestor. So do we find the mute monarchs of the ancient continents and seas represented in modern courts by a few obscure individuals still wearing the quaint livery of their antiquated ancestors. Thus do we often witness the remotest past united to the present by single links; and thus do we learn the identity of that Intelligence whose finger-marks remain upon the ruins of past geological epochs, and whose wisdom and benevo lence have beautified the landscapes which we daily admire.

But water has not been the only purifier of the materials of the solid crust of the earth. I spoke of "pre-existing rocks," from which the pebble had been broken by the violence of time. These have been purified by fire. Every where do we find these massive crystalline rocks resting beneath the entire series of those which have been accumulated in the form of sediments from water, and which have buried in their common sepulchre the hordes of earth's pre-Adamite existences. These foundation-granites are bearing upon their Atlantean shoulders the weight of twenty miles of solid strata. They contain no organic remains. The granites of this class exhibit no evidence of having been produced from sediments. They bear the marks of fire. The devouring element has caused their stubborn sides to yield. They have been in a molten condition. You may take a fragment and fuse it in a furnace,

and, on suffering it to cool under circumstances similar to those in which the rock has been placed, it resumes its rock-like aspect. Marks of heat are all about these granites and their trappean associates. Wherever they have come in contact with rocks of sedimentary origin, the latter are scorched and reddened. In many cases they have been actually fused. A sandstone has been converted into quartz; a shale into a micaceous, semi-crystalline bed; a limestone into statuary marble; and all the vestiges of living forms which these strata inclosed have been withered up and dissipated by the touch of fire.

These underlying crystalline masses are not confined to the deep-seated regions of the earth's crust. We find them thrusting their heads up through the ruptured strata which repose upon their flanks. Higher even than the highest summits formed by the stratified rocks, these foundation masses rear their bold granite heads. From these cold, serene altitudes they look down with dignified complacence. upon the fury of the tempest which brings consternation to the landscape below, but fails to ascend to those frigid, breathless summits which every living thing has equally failed to scale.

Some of these venerable domes were reared before ever a particle of sediment had been produced, or even the world-embracing sea had descended from the regions of space around the earth. From their high stations they have watched the procession of all subsequent events; and, while race after race has appeared and disappeared, they have stood calm spectators, unchanged by the myriad vicissitudes of eternity. Others were still the level floor of the ocean when the oldest sediments began to accumulate upon them. In some subsequent age a mighty force has. raised them with their load of sediments above the level of the sea. The tempests of succeeding ages have partially

stripped them of their sedimentary coverings, and they stand revealed to the light of day. In other cases the tension of the upheaved strata has caused them to break along the crest of a new-formed ridge. A chasm, miles in depth, has opened down to the molten rock below. The fiery sea has risen to the lips of the fissure, and even escaped in a consuming and terrific overflow. In other cases such an eruption has occurred beneath the waters of the sea, and an entire oceanic basin has been converted into a seething cauldron, in which fish and oysters, sea-urchins and lobsters, corallines and sea-weeds, have been cooked together in a Titanian dish of soup. Entire races have thus been exterminated; and, when the elements subsided again to a quiet condition, the waters have been repeopled with countless multitudes of beings exactly adapted to the changed circumstances of the earth-not repetitions of the forms just exterminated, but original conceptions, new ideas from the infinite resources of Nature; and yet not fundamentally different, but united to the old by such an identity of fundamental plan as to convince us that the Intelligence which presided in the former epoch survived the catastrophes which brought death to all terrestrial existence, and continued to prosecute his unchanged purposes through succeeding epochs.

Thus fire and water, in their ever-varying operations, have been the principal agencies by which Nature has wrought out the great physical results upon which we gaze with a familiarity which causes us to forget that these safe and solid foundations on which we build cities, and to which we gain a title with hard-earned gold, are but the ruins of pre-existing hills, and valleys, and plains, in which are entombed the long-forgotten relics of the brute nations which preceded us in the possession of the earth.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM IN A BLAZE.

H

AVING made a reconnoissance of the vast field which lies before the geological observer, let us ascertain what degree of interest may be derived from a more attentive survey. The ordeal by fire stands first in the order of time. We go back, then, to the molten period of the earth. We plunge into the depths of the past eternity, and behold the terrestrial globe glowing with a fervent heat. What a history to trace from that point of time to this! Continents clothed with verdure, and diversified with mountain, hill, and dale—continents spread out upon a thousand courses of solid masonry-are to be derived from this germinal, incandescent mass. It requires an unusual effort of the imagination to leap from the scenes of a modern landscape to an adequate conception of a naked, tenantless, and molten orb, enveloped in an atmosphere of deadly elements, and totally unlike the present earth save in its spherical form and its yearly journey round the sun. To the eye of imagination, the forests must vanish in smoke; the "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces" of man must crumble to clay, and sand, and loam; man and all living things must desert the earth, and leave it in the motionless and stagnant silence of death; the rivers must dry up in their channels; the ocean must change to vapor, and flee to the upper limits of the air; the rockribbed mountains must yield to the melting touch of fire; and the rigid crust of the earth must dissolve into a yielding and obedient fluid.