LYELL S CONCLUSIONS UNWARRANTED. 331 



aumniulitic formation occupies a middle place in tlie Eocene 

 series, we are struck with the comparatively modern date to 

 which some of the greatest revolutions in the physical geography 

 of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa must be referred. All 

 the mountain chains, such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, 

 and Himalayas, into the composition of whose central and lof 

 tiest parts the nummulitic strata enter bodily, could have had no 

 existence till after the middle Eocene period.&quot; Manual, p. 232. 



A still more marked case follows on the next page. 

 Because a certain bed at Claiborne in Alabama, which con 

 tains four hundred species of marine shells,&quot; includes 

 among them the Cardita planicosta, &quot; and some others 

 .dentical with European species, or very nearly allied to 

 them,&quot; Sir C. Lyell says it is &quot; highly probable the Clai 

 borne beds agree in age with the central or Bracklesham 

 group of England.&quot; When we find contemporaneity sup 

 posed on the strength of a community no greater than that 

 which sometimes exists between strata of widely-different 

 ages in the same country, it seems very much as though 

 the above-quoted caution had been forgotten. It appears 

 to be assumed for the occasion, that species which had a 

 wide range in space had a narrow range in time ; which is 

 the reverse of the fact. The tendency to systematize over 

 rides the evidence, and thrusts Nature into a formula too 

 rigid to fit her endless variety. 



&quot; But,&quot; it may be urged, &quot; surely, when in different 

 places the order of superposition, the mineral characters, 

 and the fossils, agree, it may be safely concluded that the 

 formations thus corresponding are equivalents in time. If, 

 for example, the United States display the same succes 

 sion of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, lith- 

 ologically similar, and characterized by like fossils, it is a 

 fair inference that these groups of strata were severally 

 deposited in America at the same periods that they were 

 deposited here.&quot; 



