174 NOMOS. 



beds of shells ; and hence other changes in the crust 

 of the earth. Hence the presence of animal remains 

 in the sedimentary rocks, and hence the presence 

 of limestone, for the coral reefs and beds of shells 

 are converted into this substance by the same pro- 

 cesses which petrify the ordinary sediment of the 

 sea, and transform the vegetation of a former world 

 into coal. And hence each of these more recent 

 epochs ended, not merely in the formation of simple 

 sedimentary rocks, but in the formation of limestone, 

 and coal, and rocks containing fossil remains. It is 

 in this way that many epochs ended. It was in 

 this way that the epoch ended, after which man made 

 his appearance on the earth; and it is in this way 

 that the present epoch will end when the fulness of 

 time shall come. 



Hence each seam of coal must have been a lofty 

 forest of trees upon the surface of the earth, and 

 each limestone stratum must mark the spot where 

 corals and shell-fish once lived and worked; and 

 thus each seam and stratum becomes a proof, not 

 only of past revolutions by which the dry land was 

 made to change places with the bed of the sea, but 

 it shows the extreme length of time which must 

 have been occupied in each revolution, for the length 

 of time must have been extreme if these seams and 

 strata are the remains of plants and animals which 

 have lived and died upon the spot. 



In addition to these evidences of extreme anti- 

 quity, moreover, some have fancied that they could 

 find evidence of the same kind in the organic re- 

 mains which are entombed in the crust of the earth. 



