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If the island of Banda is gradually rising, as the natives, unperverted by Geological theories, believe and assert, the general fact can admit of no doubt. Thus, then, in the first place, there is no reason to suppose any falling of the sea in the north, and rising in the Mediterranean, depending on some mysterious cause, or on any which concerns the whole ocean; while there is, equally, no reason to suppose a dimi nution of the quantity of the sea. To suppose that the bottom of the ocean has opened and engulfed its waters, that the Mediterranean and other seas have once been enclosed at higher levels, and that, by the failure of their barriers, the general level of the ocean has been altered, are dreams as gratuitous and unne cessary as they are clumsy and inapplicable. Equally speculative is the notion that the mass of water on the earth is diminishing. Every atom of that which cir culates through the great laboratory of Nature, returns to its parent bed, except that alone, perhaps, which is embodied in peat; nor were all this, and millions of times more, restored at this moment to its original state, could it make a sensible difference in the bulk or level of the sea. I need only add, that the argu ment as to the general diminution of the sea, derived from the elevations of the Coral islands, is nothing; since I have explained these in a much more satisfac tory manner: while the theories of Tertiary Deposits, which have been founded on the same supposition, cannot now require an answer. General Conclusions. I have thus examined the principal changes which the surface has undergone since the commencement of the present earth, and is now undergoing. And if the latter depends chiefly on the action of rains and