Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. 121 



found ia vast abundance in the interior of the earth, and in 

 situations far remote from their natural localities, so that 

 exuviae of the inhabitants of the torrid zone are often met 

 with in the most northerly latitudes, and vice versd. The 

 mineral geology argues, therefore, that the animals to which 

 these exuviae belonged must have died, and consequently have 

 lived in those latitudes where they are found ; and that they 

 could not have done so unless a revolution had taken place, 

 either iu the nature of those animals, or in the climates of the 

 earth. 



But the mere presence of tlieirfossil exuviae in such discordant 

 situations is no proof that they either died or lived there. We 

 know that the animals to which they belong existed on the 

 former earth — that they were destroyed with it, and indiscri- 

 minately absorbed into the mass of waters, by which their 

 destruction was effected. " If, then, it was physically possible 

 that they should have been transported by those waters from 

 the surface of the former earth into the bed of the former sea, 

 and if that bed is now become our habitable earth, it was 

 highly probable that we should discover such remnants of them 

 as have not entirely mouldered away ; and it will be much more 

 philosophical to resort to that possible cause, than to violate 

 by our conjectures the laws established either for the nature of 

 animals, or for the climate of the globe." 



But, on this supposition, the direction in which the waters 

 have transported those exuviae, seems to be diametrically oppo- 

 site to their current ; for, if the former continents existed in 

 those tracts now covered by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, 

 when they sunk into the abyss, the waters must have rushed 

 from north to south, and how in that case, could the bones of 

 the elephant or rhinoceros have been found in Siberia? 

 *' How could the sea, in moving from its bed, carry backwards 

 and deposit within its bed the spoils that it absorbed from the 

 continents which it had moved forwards to submerge ?" The 

 subsidence of the old continents was gradual — the limits or 

 coasts which circumscribed the. sea receded gradually during 

 those subsidences — " but its violence, continually discharged 

 against succeeding limits," produced the common effect of 

 re-actix)n and reflux of its waters, and this continued till the 

 subsidence was completed ; and thus retiring currents were 

 formed, " retrograding as the flux advanced." 



Such refluxes are known at the present day, between the 

 continents of Africa and America, " and the waters of the South 

 Sea, stopped by the continent of Asia, fall back naturally to 

 the coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico * ;" many other similar 

 instances might be adduced. 



Let us then suppose (what must have been the case) all the woods and 

 forests of the former earth, of every latitude, uprooted, eutauylcd toyethtr, 



=>• De la Lande. Flux ct Reflux de la Mer. Tom. iv. p. 305 



