There has been a period of geological speculation, at which all the changes which have taken place upon the earth's surface, and have left their unmistakable marks in countless relics of animal and vegetable life, were attributed to the action of sudden and violent forces, of which, to-day, earthquake and tempest and volcano are only the feeble and transitory types. Those changes have manifestly been so great and so universal, as to stand out in vivid contrast to the imperceptibly slow, the gently gradual processes, which are all that we are now able to watch and to record: surely we can attribute them only to causes as exceptional as themselves. We see Niagara cutting its backward way throu…
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