“Referring to the chart, we find that the North Sea is surrounded with land, excepting at two inlets or apertures, the one extending about 100 leagues, between the Orkney Islands and the Norwegian coast, and the other between Dover and Calais, which is of the width of seven leagues. The aggregate _waterway_ of these two passages forms the track for the tidal waters, and also for the surplus waters produced during storms which affect the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. It is also obvious that this waterway must remain nearly the same, and admit a constant quantity; or, to speak more correctly, by allowing these inlets to follow the general law, they must be enlarged by the waste or wearing of their sides, in a ratio perhaps greater than the silting up of the bottom in those particular parts, while the interior and central portions of the German Ocean are continually acquiring additional quantities of débris, along with the drainage water of the widely surrounding countries. If therefore the same, or a greater quantity of tidal and surplus waters continue to be admitted from the Atlantic and Arctic Seas into this great basin, where the process of deposition is constantly going forward, it is evident that the surface of the German Ocean must be elevated in a temporary and proportionate degree, and hence the production of those wasting and destructive effects which are everywhere observable upon its shores.
“This reasoning is also applicable, in a greater or less degree, to all parts of the world; for as the same cause everywhere exists, the same effects, when narrowly examined, must everywhere be produced. In the Southern or Pacific Ocean we have wonderful examples of great masses of land formed by madrepores and extensive coral banks, which in time assume all the characteristic features of islands. These occupy considerable portions of the watery bed of the ocean, and displace corresponding portions of the fluid. Immense quantities of mud are also said to be deposited in the Yellow Sea of China, in the great deltas formed at the mouths of the Ganges, the Plate, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the Nile, the Rhine, and other large rivers, whose joint operations, both at the surface and bottom of the ocean, are continually carrying forward the same great process of displacing the waters of the ocean; for it matters not to this question whether the débris of the higher country which is carried down by the rains and rivers, or is occasioned by the direct waste produced by the ocean itself on the margin of the land, be deposited at the bottom or surface of the ocean, it must still be allowed to displace an equal or greater bulk of the fluid, and has therefore a direct tendency to produce the derangement which we are here endeavouring to describe.