Volcanoes are quiescent for centuries before they burst forth anew; and the idea that in the so-called older countries, a certain peace must prevail in nature, is founded on a mere play of the imagination. There exists no reason for assuming one entire side of our planet to be older or newer than the other. Islands are indeed raised from the bed of the ocean by volcanic action, and gradually heightened by coral animals, as the Azores and many low flat islands of the Pacific; and these may indeed be said to be newer than many Plutonic formations of the European central chain. A small district of the earth, surrounded, like Bohemia and Kashmeer, (and like many of the vallies in the Moon), by annular mountains, may, by partial inundations, be long covered with water; and after the flowing off of this lake or inland sea, the ground on which vegetation begins gradually to establish itself might be said, figuratively, to be of recent origin. Islands have become connected with each other by the elevation of fresh masses of land; and parts of the previously dry land have been submerged by the subsidence of the oscillating ground; but submersions so general as to embrace a hemisphere, can, from hydrostatic laws, only be imagined as extending at the same time over all parts of the earth. The sea cannot permanently overflow the boundless plains of the Orinoco and the Amazons, without also overwhelming the plains adjoining the Baltic. The sequence and identity of the sedimentary strata, and of the organic remains of plants and animals belonging to the ancient world enclosed in those strata, shew that several great depositions have taken place almost simultaneously over the entire globe.” (For the fossil vegetable remains in the coal formation in North America and in Europe, compare Adolph Brongniart, Prodrome d’une Hist. des Végétaux Fossiles, p. 179; and Charles Lyell’s Travels in North America, vol. ii. p. 20). [20] p. 10.--“_The Southern Hemisphere is cooler and moister than our Northern half of the globe._”