84 Horner's Geological Address. 



or no traces of animal life, was formed either before animals 

 were created, or at a time when the sea was less prolific in 

 life than it now is : it might have been formed in a very deep 

 sea."* 



The muddy waters of the Amazon stretch SOO miles intd 

 the Atlantic Ocean, and their sediment must be deposited in 

 depths far below the zero of animal and vegetable life. Un- 

 less, therefore, portions of dead organisms be transported dowu 

 steep slopes by submarine currents, from a shallower sea to 

 those depths, and be mingled with the sediment, rocks must 

 now be forming over the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, which, 

 when upraised in future ages, will exhibit as few traces of 

 living bodies having existed when their component parts were 

 deposited, as we can discover in the slates of Wales and of 

 Westmoreland. 



We have received as yet only a part of the results of the 

 labours of Professor Forbes, and wait with impatience for 

 his greater work ; but what he has already made known to 

 us of the changes that take place in organized bodies in dif* 

 ferent zones of depth, and in different states of sea-bottom, 

 have so extensive a bearing upon many of the inference^ 

 hitherto drawn as to the age of deposits, and to changes of 

 climate from fossil contents, that some of our most esta- 

 blished doctrines ought to be revised, and their soundness 

 tested by their accordance or otherwise with these conditions. 

 Others hypothetical ly anticipated that rocks might have been 

 formed in depths un suited to animal and vegetable life ; but 

 Professor Forbes was the first, I believe, to establish, by 

 actual observation, that such is the fact as to depth, and also 

 the first to shew, as an element of geological reasoning, the 

 connection that subsists between the nature of the sea-bottom 

 (often changing on the same spot) and the living bodies it 

 supports, and thus to demonstrate the existence of laws of 

 the highest geological importance, and which must have pre- 

 vailed throughout the whole range of formations. 



Among the communications read before the Society since 



* On the light thrown on Geology by submarine researches. Jameson's 

 Edin. 1*hil. Journ., A|>ril 1844. 



