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The Sea Around Us

by Rachel Carson

Ch. 1 / The Gray Beginnings

Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea... There were tides in the new earth, long before there was an ocean. In response to the pull of the sun the molten liquids of the earth's whole surface rose in tides that rolled unhindered around the globe and only gradually slackened and diminished as the earthly shell cooled, congealed, and hardened... As soon as the earth's crust cooled enough, the rains began to fall. Never have there been such rains since that time. They fell continuously, day and night, days passing into months, into years, into centuries. They poured into the waiting ocean basins, or falling upon the continental masses, drained away to become sea... In what manner the sea produced the mysterious and wonderful stuff called protoplasm we cannot say... Before the first living cell was created, there may have been many trials and failures... All the while the cloud cover was thinning. the darkness of the nights alternated with palely illuminated days, and finally the sun for the first time shone through upon the sea.

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Rachel Carson / National Book Award

http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_rcarson.html#.V-6Gzsmapmw

http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaclassics_rcarson.html

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