THE COASTS OF SICILY. 155 



them up. They could not, therefore, possibly have 

 served as a retreat for the animals whose remains 

 they contained. The bones, moreover, which were 

 found under these conditions, exhibited, almost 

 always, traces of having been fractured, while they 

 frequently also were polished as if by continued fric- 

 tion. In order to explain these different circum- 

 stances, it was conjectured that such veins were 

 ancient fissures which had become filled up with 

 skeletons, which were washed into them from the 

 surrounding soil by currents of water. 



This theory, which was specially maintained by 

 several French geologists, received a most striking 

 confirmation in the year 1842. MM. Constant 

 Prevost* and Desnoyers discovered in the environs of 

 Paris, but more especially at Montmorency and 

 Fontainebleau, a large number of ancient fissures, 

 similar to those which are of such frequent occurrence 

 on the shores of the Mediterranean, where some of 

 them are still in the act of formation. In the former 

 they met with the characteristic remains of palaeonto- 

 logical faunas, while in the latter they found only the 

 remains of existing animals, and they w^ere able to 



* M. Constant Prevost, who is a Member of the Institute, and 

 Professor of the Faculty of Sciences at Paris, is more especially 

 known for the extreme perseverance with which he has always 

 opposed the ideas that have been admitted by most modern 

 geologists regarding the cataclysms to which our globe owes its 

 present configuration. In the opinion of M. Constant Prevost the 

 phenomena which are daily being enacted before our eyes, and the 

 forces which we see in action, suffice to explain all the facts of 

 geology, and to account for all the modifications which have been 

 experienced by the crust of our planet. 



