The hot springs and volcanoes work swiftly and directly, and return the water, the carbon dioxide, and a host of other vaporizable and soluble and fusible substances to the realm of solar activity, to the living surface zone of the earth. The dikes operate less immediately, but in the end to the same effect. They lift their materials miles above the level where they were originally laid, probably from a zone which is rarely if ever exposed to view, placing them near the surface, where the erosive agents can readily find access to them. Of the three agents which serve to export earth materials from its depths, volcanoes are doubtless the most important. They send forth the greater part of the water which is expelled from the rocks. Various computations which the writer has made indicate that an ordinary volcano, such as AEtna, in times of most intense explosion, may send forth in the form of steam one fourth of a cubic mile or more of water during each day of its discharge, and in a single great eruption may pour forth several times this quantity. In its history AEtna has probably returned to the atmosphere some hundred cubic miles of water which but for the process would have remained permanently locked up in its rock prison. The ejection of rock material, though probably on the average less in quantity than the water which escapes, is also of noteworthy importance. The volcanoes of Java and the adjacent isles have, during the last hundred and twenty years, delivered to the seas more earth material than has been carried into those basins by the great rivers. If we could take account of all the volcanic ejections which have occurred in this time, we should doubtless find that the sum of the materials thus cast forth into the oceans was several times as great as that which was delivered from the lands by all the superficial agents which wear them away. Moreover, while the material from the land, except the small part which is in a state of complete solution, all falls close to the shore, the volcanic waste, because of its fine division or because of the blebs of air which its masses contain, may float for many years before it finds its way to the bottom, it may be at the antipodes of the point at which it came from the earth. While thus journeying through the sea the rock matter from the volcanoes is apt to become dissolved in water; it is, indeed, doubtful if any considerable part of that which enters the ocean goes by gravitation to its floor. The greater portion probably enters the state of solution and makes its way thence through the bodies of plants and animals again into the ponderable state.