44 Geological Discoveries at Billesdon Coplow, 



have been shown, and are universally allowed by the initiated 

 to be the first discovered within the lias range. The records 

 of geology furnish us with a description of a similar discovery 

 of the organs of fructification belonging to a tropical climate 

 being made in that division of the British strata (superior to 

 the chalk) termed the London clay, which is, according to the 

 present system, a deposit of a much more recent epoch than 

 the lias. In reference to these fossils, which were found in the 

 Isle of Sheppey, the following remarks are extracted from 

 Conybeare's Geology of England : — " The evidence of a neigh- 

 bouring region of dry land seems attested by these vegetable 

 remains, which, from the state in which they are found, can 

 scarcely be supposed to have been drifted from any great dis- 

 tance. . . We can scarcely resist the temptation of asking, 

 What was that ancient land ? Had any part of England 

 then raised its head above the waves ? Does it not sound 

 extravagantly, even to enquire whether its oldest and highest 

 mountain tracts then formed a group of spice islands , fre- 

 quented by the turtle and the crocodile? Speculations like 

 these, though unavoidably suggested, almost give the features 

 of romance to the sober walks of science." 



According to the author above quoted, beginning with the 

 coal formation as the plane of superposition, the Has is the 

 second, and the London clay the fifteenth in the geological 

 series of English strata ; consequently, according to the doc- 

 trine of the relative ages of strata, a series of epochs transpired, 

 or geological catastrophes performed their respective revo- 

 lutionising effects on the face of this country, during the im- 

 mense period which intervened between the formation of the 

 lias and London clays. Now, bearing in mind the data (fos- 

 sils) from which these inferences are drawn, the following 

 queries naturally suggest themselves : — How are we to account 

 for the presence, in strata deposited subsecutively to the car- 

 boniferous strata, of some of the identical fossils (of tropical 

 origin) which characterise the carboniferous formation ? From 

 whence came, and at what particular epoch flourished, the 

 tropical organs of fructification, &c., found in the lias ? What 

 are we to infer from the circumstance of analogous vegetable 

 products of the same climate being found embedded in strata 

 supposed to be formed at periods so remote as is ascribed to 

 the deposition of the submedial and superior formations ? 



Whilst indulging in such speculations as the above, we 

 have, for argument's sake, admitted the modern doctrine of a 

 series of subaqueous catastrophes and progressive changes 

 having, in the course of an immeasurable space of time, coated 

 the globe with regular and well-defined strata, whose order of 



