After this period of unknown length, began the epocha of aquatic life; when the breath of GOD, moving on the waters, gave life and motion to organized aquatic beings; 1. Plants and Fucites, 2. Spongites and Alcyonites, 3. Polyps and corals, 4. Worms and radials, 5. Sluggs and shells, 6. Mollusca and Cephalopodes, 7. Trilobites and Crustacites.... All incipient vegetating beings, or inferior unbony animals, gradually evolved and born in the waters of the Sea.... Followed by the more perfect vertebrated aquatic animals, 8. Fishes and Sharks, 9. Snakes and reptiles; lastly, 10. Seals and whales. Some of which require shallow water, to dwell and breed.... This was the second period of American Creation: _Aquatic life_.
The third epocha is that of the destruction of aquatic life, by cataclysms and depositions, submarine volcanic cavernous eruptions or other causes, throwing suddenly in a soft, sandy or muddy state, the substances that have formed the secondary mountains or strata of psamites, argillites, calcarites, carbonites, &c., that overwhelmed the aquatic tribes in their way; which becoming therein entombed as living medals of this globe, declare to us these mighty successive cataclysms or floods of sand, clay, lime and coal; now met in vast regions, the Alleghanies and Central North America, Florida and the Bahama Islands; the hills and plains of Brazil, Chili, East Peru, and Central Maragnon.... This was the second period of terrestrial formation in America, the third of successive eventful periods.
The fourth must have been the rise of the land above the waters, if not already partly begun. The epocha of terrestrial upheaving and distortion of strata, by an awful inward force; either volcanic, or calorific, or of growing crystalization; forming mountains and islands, raising them above the Ocean; to become the nucleus of future Continents. The American hemisphere had then probably two great islands, in the North and South, with many smaller islands between them, in the tropical sea: the Alleghany and Atlantis forming two others in the east, and many others studding the two polar regions. The insulated mountain tract between Lake Nicaragua and the long valley of Choco, must then have formed another Island of the Antilles. Guyana or Parima was also another large island: while Brazil was a vast peninsula attached to the Andes. I have endeavored to express this first configuration of America in my two maps of North and South America; when the Ocean was yet about 500 feet higher than it is actually. Whether this cataclysm was contemporaneous throughout, or by successive throes must be ascertained by Geogony.... This was the fourth period of terrestrial events in this hemisphere; but the first of terrestrial separate existence.