“¢ Questions addressed to Naturalists.” 439 
by the waves in a state of perfect preservation, to some very di- 
stant shore, and there find a root-bed and flourish, and in its 
turn shed its seed over the surrounding country; or find a pre- 
serving dormitory deep in the watery sediment, and remain in 
reserve for the incidental occurrences of revolving time. This 
sediment has been accumulating for ages on all the coasts of the 
Low Countries, and what was shore and surface some thousand 
"years ago, may now be deep in the earth and far inland. This, 
. 
however, does not prevent these former surfaces being dug up; 
and when dug up, nothing in nature can be more natural than 
the evolution of the native plants of the various strata, and even 
plants of very different and distant regions, whose seed may have 
been floated on the waters, or borue through the air on the 
wings of the storm. Vegetable productions of the West Indies 
and America have been floated across the expanded Atlantic, 
and thrown ashore on the beach of the Hebrides, the Orkneys, 
and Shetland: and very probably some of these may have found 
their way to the more southern shores of Europe, not excepting 
the coast of East Friesland. 
The natural period of human existence is so very limited, as to 
preclude the possibility of watching the slow progressive opera- 
tions of nature: the incident of to-day, may have had its embryo 
deep laid in nature a thousand years before its development. Our 
scanty knowledge of natural phenomena can only be gleaned 
from the few authenticated facts that are fortunately on record, 
and by calling to our aid the analogical reasonings that may be 
drawn from the wide field of material existence. In this con- 
templation, we soon perceive the perishable insignificance of the 
higher classes of animated nature, that a few revolving years lay 
prostrate in their kindred dust. But in the lower links of the 
animated chain, to the productions of the ovum, the duration 
and preservation of latent life are beyond the powers of our li- 
mited comprehension to calculate. The germs of vegetable exist- 
ence | believe to be imperishable when bedded in their native 
strata, however deep. To the higher classes of the creation, to 
all who are endued with intelligence and power to protect and 
continue the existence of their kind, the principle and power of 
laying aside and resuming life -+has been denied ;—while to the 
inferior orders, to the fly and to the reptile, either in the egg, the 
chrysalis, or the perfect animal, when bedded in earth beyond the 
influence of light, or iticlosed in the solid rock, the revolution 
of a thousand years must be as one day, and one day as a thou- © 
sand years; and when again called into new life, they are as ca- 
pable of producing and propagating their kind, as when first laid 
to rest in their millesian dormitory. 
However 
