and the Straits of Dover will be dry land, so that the union of England
and France will be formed anew.

Strangely enough, with these facts known to him, Lamarck did not see
that such changes were due to changes of level of the land rather than
to their being abandoned or invaded by the sea, but explained these by
his bizarre hypothesis of westward-flowing currents due to the moon's
action; though it should be in all fairness stated that down to recent
times there have been those who believed that it is the sea and not the
land which has changed its level.

This idea, that the sea and not the land has changed its level, was
generally held at the time Lamarck wrote, though Strabo had made the
shrewd observation that it was the land which moved. The Greek
geographer threw aside the notion of some of his contemporaries, and
with wonderful prevision, considering the time he wrote and the limited
observations he could make, claimed that it is not the sea which has
risen or fallen, but the land itself which is sometimes raised up and
sometimes depressed, while the sea-bottom may also be elevated or sunk
down. He refers to such facts as deluges, earthquakes, and volcanic
eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea.

"And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, not
merely the islands, but the continents which can be lifted up
together with the sea; and, too, the large and small tracts may
subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many
others, have been engulfed by earthquakes."[75]

But it was not until eighteen centuries later that this doctrine, under
the teachings of Playfair, Leopold von Buch, and Elie de Beaumont
(1829-30) became generally accepted. In 1845 Humboldt remarked, "It is a
fact to-day recognized by all geologists, that the rise of continents is
due to an actual upheaval, and not to an apparent subsidence occasioned
by a general depression of the level of the sea" (_Cosmos_, i). Yet as
late as 1869 we have an essay by H. Trautschold[76] in which is a
statement of the arguments which can be brought forward in favor of the
doctrine that the increase of the land above sea level is due to the
retirement of the sea.[77]

As authentic and unimpeachable proofs of the former existence of the sea
where now it is absent, Lamarck cites the occurrence of fossils in rocks
inland. Lamarck's first paper on fossils was read to the Institute in
1799, or about thre