But after all these revolutions and vicissitudes which opposed the birth of ocean, perpetually destroying its perpetually renewed formation, we come at last to a period when, in consequence of the constantly decreasing temperature of the earth-rind and its increasing thickness, the waters at last conquered a permanent abode on its surface, and the oceanic empire was definitely founded. The scene has now changed; the sea of fire has disappeared, and water covers the surface of the earth. The rind is still too thin and the eruptions from below are still too fluid to form higher elevations above the general surface: all is flat and even, and land nowhere rises above the mirror of a boundless ocean. This new state of things still affords the same spectacle of dreary uniformity and solitude in all its horrors. The temperature of the waters is yet too high, and they contain too many extraneous substances, too many noxious vapors arise from the clefts of the earth-rind, the dense atmosphere is still too much impregnated with poisons to allow the hidden germs of life anywhere to awaken. A strange and awful primitive ocean rises and falls, rolls and rages, but nowhere does it beat against a coast; no animal, no plant grows and thrives in its bosom; no bird flies over its expanse. But, meanwhile, the hidden agency of Providence is unremittingly active in preparing a new order of things. The earth-rind increases in thickness, the crevices become narrower, and the fluid or semi-fluid masses escaping through the clefts ascend to a more considerable height. Thus the first islands are formed, and the first separation between the dry land and the waters takes place. At the same time no less remarkable changes occur, as well in the constitution of the waters as in that of the atmosphere. The further the glowing internal heat of the planet retires from the surface, the greater is the quantity of water which precipitates itself upon it. The ocean, obliged to relinquish part of its surface to the dry land, makes up for the loss of extent by an increase of depth, and the clearer atmosphere allows the enlivening sunbeam to gild here the crest of a wave, there a naked rock. And now also life awakens in the seas, but how often has it changed its forms, and how often has Neptune displaced his boundaries since that primordial dawn?