1856.] Bo Fossils and Bocks Growf 41 



DO FOSSILS AND ROCKS GROW? 



GrEOLOGY, although comparatively a new science, still has its estab- 

 lished principles. 



Odc of the most important of these is, that the fossils which many 

 rocks exhibit, were once living plants and animals. As obvious as this 

 now appears to us, it found many opponents in the early histor}^ of the 

 science; and when these objectors were driven to the wall by the plain 

 question, " Whence came these images of living things in the depths of 

 earth, if they did not grow upon its surface, and were buried here by the 

 ction of water, in ages long passed?" then would they reply, "they 

 were formed where we find them, in the interior of the earth, by an 

 inherent p lastic force. ' ' 



But such absurd doctrine could not be tenable, and nothing in the 

 geologist's creed seems more clearly established than that the fossils we 

 preserve in our cabinets are veritable remains of beings which long ago 

 swam in the waters or flourished upon the surface of the earth. But, as 

 we see by the Scientijic American of December 1st, a new antagonist has 

 arisen, in the person of William Eunor, an English practical miner, of 

 great experience. 



In a communication to the London Mining Journal he says : 



" I would call attention to the fossil plant, so often found on stones, 

 and notice that they are at all times found to take the cleavage way of 

 rooks, and to incline south or west, with the top of the plant upward. 

 Were these plants once imbedded in sediment, which had undergone 

 upheavals, they would now be found lying in all directions, and not 

 passing between the cleavage, as the cleavage is often contrary to the 

 bed. Every different rock appears to produce its own species of plant. 

 I have long doubted the fact of a large portion of them being plants 

 which once enjoyed the sun's rays. Query, are these plants the rock's 

 natural produce, or the seed of living plants that became imbedded and 

 strove hard* with Nature to produce what we see? or did al] plants 

 germinate from the earth ? 



"■ I must mention a plant which I saw growing last Christmas, in a 

 level from seventy to one hundred fathoms deep, at North Wheal-crofty. 

 These plants might be seen coming out of the joints, some not above six 



