98 Sir A. Crichton OH the [Feb. 



against which opinion I shall have much to offer afterwards, 

 cause me to exclude them at present as uncertain witnesses ; 

 neither do I admit as proofs of a high temperature in the north- 

 ern latitudes of the antediluvian world those lossil shells which 

 are found in the limestone rocks of northern countries ; for 

 though many of them bear a close analogy to those which are 

 at present found in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans, yet 

 both Brocchi and Olivi have shown that the shells of the Indian 

 Ocean are also found in very temperate climates, for instance, 

 iij the Mediterranean Sea; and it is most probable that all the 

 shells of the Sub-Appenines were inhabitants of that sea, since 

 there is a great resemblance between them and the living 

 genera. Although these, therefore, are to be rejected as posi- 

 .tive proofs of a very elevatea temperature in northern latitudes 

 at the time that the inhabitants of these shells were alive, yet 

 they may be admitted as concomitant proofs of a great equality 

 of temperature, and that a warm one, over a great portion 

 of our earth such as cannot be explained by solar influence ; for 

 when we reflect that tlie analogous species of several of these 

 (such as the iiaiiii/iis pompilius found at Grignon and Courtag- 

 non) are only found ni very warm climates, and that a fossil 

 shell analogous to the livins; froclius assliitiitans which inhabits 

 the seas of South America, has also been found as far north as 

 Hordwell and Barton, in Great Britain; at Grignon, in France, 

 and also in the contemporaneous deposits of many other places 

 in Europe, it follows as a most probable supposition, that the 

 temperature of those northern latitudes was many degrees 

 warmer formerly than it is at present. Whoever reflects that 

 among the immense number of fossil shells many are remarkable 

 for their extreme thinness, delicacy, and minuteness of parts, 

 none of which have been injured, but, on the contrary, are most 

 perfectly preserved, will find it impossible to admit the notion of 

 their having been brought from warmer and distant regions to 

 the places where they are found by some great and sweeping 

 catastrophe. JMany of them could not have been carried even 

 a short distance by an agitated ocean, or the retreat of waters, 

 without suiTering attrition and fracture. 



If they are met with composing the mass of entire mountains, 

 in the interior of continents, and far above the level of the sea, 

 this only proves either that the strata in which they are found 

 was raised above the level of the sea after their death, by some 

 subterraneous and extraordinary force, or that the regions in 

 which they are found were abandoned by seas which formerly 

 covered the places in which they are now detected. 



When we search deeper in the bowels of the earth than the 

 strata in which the bones and skeletons of the large terrestrial 

 quadrupeds of warm climates are found, or shells analogous to 

 those of the South Sea, we arrive at a very peculiar and inte- 

 resting Flora, which must arrest our attention for some time. 



