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summit of its highest mountains, be esteemed sufficient proofs of the presence of the ocean in those places, a scene no less wild and uncommon than the former, rises before our imagination; in which the products of the Equator and the poles appear to be jumbled together, in a manner incapable of being explained by any of the known analogies of nature.

The immense quantities of petrified sea bodies, found in so many different places and situations, are assuredly instances sufficient to prove, that they could not have been transported and deposited in those situations by the waters of any one general submersion; for the greatest part of them, instead of being found in the bowels of the earth, and in solid marble at the depth of seven or eight hundred feet, must have remained on the surface. * Another proof is, that the bones, horns, claws, &c. of land animals, are seldom found in a petrified state, and are rarely incorporated in marl or other hard stones; whereas, if these effects had been produced by a deluge, the remains of land animals would have been found in marls, as well as those of fishes. Let us look into the excavations that have been formed by nature or by art. From

* Buffon.

From the lowest valley whence we can descend, we find prodigious heaps of marine bodies at immense depths, either in quarries of calcareous stone, in fossils, &c. and we find them also in the towering strata of mountains; in the mid regions of continents as well as in islands; from the summits even of the Alps, to some hundreds of feet below the level of Amsterdam.

The strata in which many fossils are thus found, prove them, I must believe, to be of an antediluvian period, a period beyond the records of men, and attended with such circumstances, that we might not unreasonably conceive some calamitous event had destroyed the greatest part of animal life from the face of the earth, and consigned to oblivion a cause, the re cord of which must otherwise have been transmitted from posterity to posterity, to the very end of time. * These fossil phænomena, indeed, afford a sufficiency of examples to incline philosophers to the opinion, that the earth has undergone commotions abstracted from a deluge, and that those commotions might have destroyed its inhabitants partially, if not generally. But, had the sea little by little got over the face of the earth; had it covered and pro

* Antiquity of the Earth.

portionably portionably uncovered the plains and the loftiest mountains; we should in such case, with the spoils of that element, every where find innumerable vestiges of the habitations of men. We should every where see monuments varied according to countries, and shewing as many different characters, as there have been revolutions in the immense duration of eternity. But, there are no such traces to be discovered. In every corner we see marks of the dwelling of the sea, but none of those submerged monuments, which ought to be met with. The earth, then, must repeatedly have burst, and the waters have rushed into the chasms, and closed the scene of existence.

The petrifications which are thus found in a fossil state are various. It is worth, however, observing that those of shells, are found on, or nearest to the earth; those of fish, deeper; and those of wood deepest. * That organic substances are most commonly found in strata of marl, chalk, limestone, or clay; seldom in sandstone; still more rarely in gypsum; but, never in gneiss, granite, basaltes, or schoerl; but that they somesimes occur in pyrites, and ores of iron, copper, and silver; and that they are found where

• Kirwan.

where their originals could not have existed. The calcareous petrifactions consist of calcareous stones, in the form of animal or vegetable substances; the former are called zoophytes; the latter phytholites. The most remarkable of the former are, first, those of the coral class, of a ramified and tubular form, as coral, madrepores, millepores, astroites. Secondly, those of the class of sea worms, as belemnites, which are of a conic or cylendrical form; asteriæ and entrochi, which have a starry appearance. And thirdly, those of the testaceous class, as nautilites, ammonites, echini, &c.

Stony, mineral, and stalactitical concretions may be found in caverns, where, by affinity, and the different laws of attraction observable in heterogeneous bodies, the air may dispel the fluid vehicle, and thus complete the consolidation. Agglutination may also be produced from the sperm of shell fish, and sea animalculæ, which, operating on certain heterogeneous bodies, will unite them into a firm mass. By this process, certain soft land, which is often undermined by the sea, will, as we have before observed, become rock. But, says Mr. Douglas, * the induration of bones and skeletons, &c. cannot be performed in so small a period of time. These remains were certainly of the antediluvian world. Stalactical matter, and some minerals, may be produced under human observation; but, has the operation of indurated chalk, flint, &c. ever been noticed in its progress, or its induration satisfactorily accounted for?

• Antiquity of the Earth,

per

There was much ground, indeed, at one time, for this question: for, though the Scripture declares, that all the foundations of the great deep were broken up, yet we have no authority to conclude, that this convulsion was in its effects equal to those which have produced the fossil phænomena, that are found in the bowels of the earth, in all quarters of the globe. This, doubtless, would have procured effects similar to those which are found to attend circumstances descriptive of similar connections; such as the strata of fossil bones, found on the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia, in the islands of Cherso and Osero, in the island of Cyprus, in most of the islands of the Ægeian sea, and the rock of Gibraltar; which imply the most convincing proof of an alluvian, by the dislocation and fracture of the bones, and here and there small specimens of shell fish embossed in the mass; whereas, all the large spoils of marine animals

are

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