THE COASTS OP SICILY. ^ 243 



during the different revolutions of Naples has 

 acquired a mournful celebrity. To the east and 

 west of the island, the calcareous rock underlies a 

 stone of a very different character and known to 

 geologists as Palermo limestone. This stone, which 

 is soft and friable, is almost entirely composed of the 

 fossil remains of the lower animals. On making an 

 examination with a microscope, or even with the naked 

 eye, we discover an incredible variety of zoophytes, 

 an infinite number of sponges, and many different 

 kinds of Polyparies. A cubic foot of this stone 

 would in itself afford materials for an entire collec- 

 tion, and if the sea with its living population had not 

 absorbed all our time, we should certainly have pos- 

 sessed ourselves of many highly interesting samples 

 of this rock. In the midst of these fossil remains, 

 which are very small and sometimes even microsco- 

 pical, belonging, as they do, to the lowest representa- 

 tives of animality, we find scattered here and there 

 the remains of sea-urchins and of star-fishes, and the 

 shells of oysters and pectens; but these animals, Avhich 

 were at once more elevated in the scale of beino; and 

 of much more considerable dimensions, constitute 

 only a very small part of the materials which enter 

 into the composition of the rock. In this respect 

 the limestone of Favignana affords another proof of 

 a very general but most remarkable fact. When we 

 examine the animal remains buried within the strata 

 of the earth's crust, in the hope of tracing the history 

 of the past, we cannot fail to recognise the important 

 part which has been played in the geology of our 

 globe by animals, whose significance in this respect 



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