OF A FORMER WORLD. 19 



gone ? and yet cautious observation, and patient and un- 

 prejudiced investigation, are alone necessary to enable us to 

 answer the interrogation. 



Dismissing from his mind all preconceived opinions, 

 the student must be prepared to discover that the earth's 

 surface has been, and still is, subject to perpetual mutation, 

 that the sea and land are continually changing place, 

 that what is now dry land was once the bottom of the deep, 

 and that the bed of the present ocean will, in its turn, be 

 elevated above the water and become dry land, that all 

 the solid materials of the globe have been in a softened, fluid, 

 or gaseous state, and that the remains of countless myr- 

 iads of animals and plants are not only entombed in the 

 rocks and mountains, but that every grain of sand, and ev- 

 ery particle of dust wafted by the wind, may teem with the 

 relics of beings that lived and died in periods long antece- 

 dent to the creation of the human race. Astounding as are 

 these propositions, they rest upon evidence so clear and in- 

 controvertible, that they cannot fail to be admitted by ev- 

 ery intelligent and unprejudiced reader, who will bestow but 

 a moderate share of attention. to the phenomena, of which 

 it is the purport of this work to offer a familiar exposition. 



Scott, in his " Marmion," refers to a legend once preva- 

 lent in the neighborhood of Whitby, that the ammonite 

 shells, which are common in that vicinity, had formerly 

 been snakes, which the foundress of the abbey, St. Hilda, 

 succeeded in decapitating by her prayers, and then convert- 

 ing into stone : 



" And how the nuns of Whitby told, 

 How of countless snakes, each one 

 Was changed into a coil of stone 

 When holy Hilda pray'd. 

 Themselves within their sacred bound 

 Their stony folds had often found." 



We. shall now proceed to lay before the reader some of 

 the data connected with the stratification of the earth, which 





