and their- Relation to the modern System of Geology. 43 



to magnesian limestone, the shaly limestone, and the oolite, 

 contain the genera, the families, and species of shellfish, ma- 

 drepores, coralites, encrinites, pentacrinites, far beyond what 

 scientific men have attempted to distinguish. Mr. John 

 Walcott has very accurately painted and engraved about sixty 

 shells, besides leeches, bones, and palates ; Mr. Sowerby, in 

 his beautifully coloured work on shells, has published many 

 others : but these do not contain the fourth part of the spe- 

 cies which exist in gentlemen's cabinets. This science, which 

 merits the most enlightened classifications and the best powers 

 of the pencil, is yet in a state of infancy. But of seeing it 

 brought to perfection one can have little hope ; learned men 

 having unaccountably committed themselves, by contending 

 that in every fresh order of strata we meet with an entire fresh 

 order of extraneous fossils. It is granted, at once, that we do 

 meet with such order; for the works of the Creator are im- 

 mense. We meet, also, with fresh plants in every continent. 

 Nevertheless, in all these fresh orders of strata, we meet with 

 many shells and plants found nearly in all the other orders. 

 These are facts founded on personal examination and the 

 severest scrutinies. These are facts which command the judg- 

 ment, and must eventually supersede the contumacy and novelty 

 of our modern theories. No man will surely tell us that the 

 belemnites, the ammonites, the ostracites, the trochites, the 

 nautilites, and the gryphites, found in the lowest strata of 

 the alum shale of Yorkshire are of a totally different order 

 from those of the same name in this district, and in the chalk 

 and limestone ranges of the south of England. I have seen 

 three of the Yorkshire ammonites, which differ from those 

 of the south ; one of which had mouldings on the whole spiral 

 coil, resembling the edges of the oak leaf." 



Of vegetable fossils, embedded in the same mass, many 

 occur ; some of a species of fir, and of other dicotyledonous 

 woods; also detached leaflets of the osmund filicite upon 

 nodules of ironstone, and other vegetable impressions upon 

 the sandstones (found on the spot where the coal and its con- 

 comitants crop out to the surface) ; which fossils are described 

 by geologists as belonging to the old coal formation. To 

 these I may add the extraordinary circumstance of the pre- 

 sence of an immense number and great variety of tropical 

 fruits, with knots of wood, and other vegetable fossils, found 

 in a most perfect state, embedded in the regular stratifications, 

 about fifteen feet from the surface of the earth, and on the 

 spot where the boring for coal was performed. These fossils 

 have been pronounced fruits of a tropical climate by many 

 eminent scientific men in London and Edinburgh, where they 



