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The deformation therefore took place about the close of the Paleozoic. It seems to have begun in the Permian, in, eastern Pennsylvania, for here the Permian strata are wanting, and to have continued into the Trias, whose earlier formations are absent over all the area. With this wide uplift the subsidence of the sea floor which had so long been general in eastern North America came to an end.
With the subsidence of the Isthmian disturbances and the erection of the State of Panama into a federal district under the direct government of the constitutional administration at Bogota, a new order of things has been inaugurated, which, although as yet somewhat experimental and affording scope for arbitrary exercise of power by the delegates of the national authority, promises much improvement.
Hence, if prolonged movements of approximately contemporaneous subsidence are generally widely extensive, as I am strongly inclined to believe from my examination of the Coral Reefs of the great oceans or if, confining our view to South America, the subsiding movements have been co-extensive with those of elevation, by which, within the same period of existing shells, the shores of Peru, Chile, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, and La Plata have been upraised then we can see that at the same time, at far distant points, circumstances would have been favourable to the formation of fossiliferous deposits of wide extent and of considerable thickness; and such deposits, consequently, would have a good chance of resisting the wear and tear of successive beach-lines, and of lasting to a future epoch.
At a Christmas party, a sort of feast of an Abbot of Unreason held in the less sacred parts of the cathedral precincts, the brat decorated the statue of an Archbishop with a pink and blue paper cap taken from a cracker. The effect must have been much the same as that produced by the subsidence of Tim Gorman's neck. "Do you really mean to give it to me?" I said. "I should like to have it very much.
"There is nothing which represents so faithfully this appearance as the slow subsidence of some flocculent chemical precipitates in a transparent fluid, when viewed perpendicularly from above: so faithfully, indeed, that it is hardly possible not to be impressed with the idea of a luminous medium intermixed, but not confounded, with a transparent and non-luminous atmosphere, either floating as clouds in our air, or pervading it in vast sheets and columns like flame, or the streamers of our northern lights". Treatise on Astronomy, p. 208.
When, however, one of the arches of Sansovino's beautiful library fell, owing to a subsidence of the foundations, neither his eminent position nor ability prevented the authorities from throwing him into prison as a bad workman; nor was he liberated, for all his powerful friends, without a heavy fine.
I have attempted to show that the geological record is extremely imperfect; that only a small portion of the globe has been geologically explored with care; that only certain classes of organic beings have been largely preserved in a fossil state; that the number both of specimens and of species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely as nothing compared with the number of generations which must have passed away even during a single formation; that, owing to subsidence being almost necessary for the accumulation of deposits rich in fossil species of many kinds, and thick enough to outlast future degradation, great intervals of time must have elapsed between most of our successive formations; that there has probably been more extinction during the periods of subsidence, and more variation during the periods of elevation, and during the latter the record will have been least perfectly kept; that each single formation has not been continuously deposited; that the duration of each formation is probably short compared with the average duration of specific forms; that migration has played an important part in the first appearance of new forms in any one area and formation; that widely ranging species are those which have varied most frequently, and have oftenest given rise to new species; that varieties have at first been local; and lastly, although each species must have passed through numerous transitional stages, it is probable that the periods, during which each underwent modification, though many and long as measured by years, have been short in comparison with the periods during which each remained in an unchanged condition.
Planed and smoothed off as they are, the Algonkian and Archaean masses are to be submerged once more in the ever receptive ocean. A period of subsidence occurs, and the whole area is soon hidden under the face of the sea. But, all around these are masses, some day to be mountain peaks, that refuse to sink again into the sea. Then the forces of the air assail them.
Darwin, being desirous not to merely put out a flashy hypothesis, but to get at the truth of the matter, said to himself, "If my notion of this matter is right, then atolls and encircling reefs, inasmuch as they are dependent upon subsidence, ought not to be found in company with volcanoes; and, 'vice versa', volcanoes ought not to be found in company with atolls, but they ought to be found in company with fringing reefs."
Everybody who has observed the working of emotions in persons of various temperaments knows well enough that they have periods of incubation, which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and degree of excitement, yet evidently go through a strictly self-limited series of evolutions, at the end of which, their result an act of violence, a paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or whatever it may be declares itself, like the last stage of an attack of fever and ague.
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