The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

170

" LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR."

heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the
dry land appear." How this was accomplished can
now be read much more clearly in the " book of nature " than in the written word.
The internal fires of the earth, pent up as they were
by the solid crust that enclosed them, began, in their
efforts to escape, to throw up the surface of the earth
into ridges, and hills, and mountains, and of course the
waters retired from these ridges, and hills, and mountains, and they became dry land; and one third of the
earth being thus raised, the other two thirds were of
course depressed, and there the waters gathered into
oceans, and seas, and lakes: and thus was completed
the third period of preparation for supplying man with
water.
That the mountains were once raised from level
layers, or strata, which had previously for ages been
covered with water, there is not in the mind of any
reflecting man, who knows the facts, a shadow of
doubt. Look into any cave, or excavation, or mine,
in any mountain on the face of the earth, and we can
see that the strata of different materials, such as coal,
slate, &c., which must have been formed under water,
and of course on a level, have been pushed up from a
level to the position in which they are now seen, by
some power from beneath, as if the wet leaves of a
pamphlet had been pushed up into an inverted cup,
and there left to dry. Finding such a semi-globular
mass of printed matter afterwards, and separating these
leaves, it could be seen that they once were on a level,