[ ^5^ J 



mentioned, immenfc quantities of marine fhells either difperfed 

 or colleiSted have been difcovered. In the province of Touraine 

 in France, at one hundred miles diftance from the fea, there 

 exifts at a depth of eight or nine feet a heap of fht'.Is of nine 

 leagues in furface and upwards of twenty feet in depth, many 

 of which are thofe of the neighbouring feas, a collediion which 

 certainly required many years to accumulate. — Mem. Paris, 1720. 

 p. 524, 540. Moft of thefe fhells are placed on their flat and not 

 on their convex furface.— Ibid, which fhews they muft have been 

 gently depofited, and not huddled together by a fudden and vio- 

 lent inundation. In fome places fhells of different fpecies are 

 thus accumulated, but in others they are regularly arranged in 

 families. — 1 Bergm. Erdekug. 251, 262. 6 Roz. 120. Widem. 

 Verwandl. 118. which fhews alfo that they were neither fuddenly 

 nor promifcuoufly colleded. Many fmaller but fimilar accumu- 

 lations occur in England, as may be feen in the Philof. Tranf. 

 and Ray's Difcoveries, and in Peru 2 Don. Ulloa's Voy. 197. and 

 alfo in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Sweden, &c. which being 

 generally known and acknowledged it is needlefs to detail, but 

 it deferves particular attention, though many of them are found 

 at a depth of from eight to one or two hundred feet under the fur- 

 face of the earth, and at flill greater depths from the furface of 

 mountains, yet fcarce any are found lower than the adual fur- 

 face of the bed of the fea. — i Bergm. Erde, 176. Some indeed are 

 found that do not now occur in the neighbouring coaft, bccaufe 

 they are of the kind called Pelagicce, which exift only at great 



depths. 



