i 
Fossil Shells and their Strata, were created nearly together ! 115 
practice of our neighbours on the Continent, who from national 
feelings, seem to make a point of forwarding the publications of 
their countrymen: I am sorry however to perceive, that this is 
not here the case; the article ‘* Conchology,” not long published 
in that respectable work the “* Supplement to the Fifth Edition of 
the Encyclopedia Britannica,” intended to bring down the sub- 
jects to the time of writing the Supplementary Articles, in the: 
chapter expressly ‘ on Fossil Shells,” not only omits all mention 
of Mr. Martin’s works, (whose widow and orphans languish for the: 
comforts which the sale of the copies on hand would produce), 
but it also totally omits the mention of Mr. Smith or his works! ; 
it would have given me pleasure to have added, if] could have 
done so, that this omission, by the Rev. Dr. John Fleming the 
writer of the article, might have arisen, from the mention of Mr.. 
Martin and Mr. Smith not having come before him, in the works 
from which he was quoting at the time: the reverse however is 
the case, see Min. Conch. 1. 153, &c. 
Whoever attentively examines the great number of Strata, some 
of them in groups consisting of several successive Strata, of many 
Beds collectively, and others in single beds, of various thickness, . 
which are as utterly devoid of Organic Remains, as any of those 
more crystalline masses, which inconsiderate Theorists have on 
these accounts pronounced to be“ primitive,’ that is, of a date an- 
tecedent to the first existence of living Beings! ; and attentive: 
Persons who at the same time observe, that these Strata without 
Organic Remains, are interposed between others which abound 
in such Remains, in nearly an equal degree of plenty throughout 
every part of the plane which they occupy : such observers of Or- 
ganic Remains in their natural deposits, can hardly fail [ think 
of concluding (as I have done mauy years ago) that every indivi- 
dual Shell or Organic Remain, which appears after each of these 
non-organic Strata or Beds, (or next above such in.the Series, 
especially those of considerable thickness) must have then begun 
to exist, or they were created since the deposition of the Stratum 
which underlies them, and contains no Organic Remains. 
The conclusion of such careful observers, will scarcely I think 
be less certain and undoubted, that Shells of a defined species in 
a particular Bed, which covers a series of Beds containing none 
of that defined Species, but other Shells of different species, that 
such defined Species, as certainly began to exist, or were created 
at that particular era, when the lowest bed in which they are seen, 
began to be deposited, (and at which period, the matter of the 
Stratum itself imbedding them, also received its first existence 
from the Creator, as I conclude, see Min. Conch. 1. 128): from 
whence it will follow, that the almost innumerable Species of Or- 
ganic Beings which existed, prior to the Earth receiving the same 
H2 dimensions 
