"The notion that the ground is naturally steadfast is an error. The idea of terra firma belongs with the ancient belief that the earth was the center of the universe. It is, indeed, by their mobility that the continents survive the increasing assaults of the ocean waves, and the continuous down-wearing which the rivers and glaciers bring about." --_Professor Shaler._ Nearly the whole of Sweden and Norway, for instance, has been rising for thousands of years. This is proved by the fact that old sea-beaches full of shells of species now living in neighboring seas, are found from fifty to seventy miles inland, and several hundred feet above the present sea-level on both sides of the Scandinavian peninsula.[2] Such sea-beaches are found high above the present water level in Chile and Patagonia, and the chalk cliffs of England were formed under the waves of the ocean. Le Conte says that one of the most evident proofs of crustal movements in ancient geologic times is the great thickness of shallow water sediments (sandstones, shales and limestones) over the greater portions of all of the continents, which represent areas of slow subsidence; and the great breaks or unconformities between the series of strata, which represent areas of uplift and atmospheric erosion. Although sand and gravel are distributed over the bottom of the ocean near the land, dredging expeditions reaching down their metal cylinders for samples of the sea-floor at greater depths in various sections of the globe, have discovered that it is of a different composition, one-third of its area being covered with red clay. _Red clay_ is composed of iron and silica and represents all that is left of the minute shells which cover the tiny sea-animals which flourish in such countless multitudes throughout the ocean. These shells, after the animal dies, drift downward in ceaseless showers and the lime, of which they are largely composed, is dissolved during the long journey to the bottom. "_Ooze_" is found in water less deep and is formed by the accumulation of minute shells of different species. Minute shells of the same species have formed great thicknesses of limestone or of chalk even as grains of sand build in time their banks of sandstone. Such information as this is, of course, disclosed by the penetrating eye of the microscope. Chalk cliffs, now dry land, form thousands of miles of habitable land in Europe, while coral sand pressed into rock forms the unique foundation of the Bahama Islands, the Bermudas, many islands of the Pacific, and the Great Barrier Reef extending for a thousand miles along the shores of northern Australia!