8 LIMESTONE. 



should we have been able, rationally, to account 

 for the great diffusion of this substance throughout 

 the globe, however we might have conjectured the 

 formation, without the Mosaical revelation. It may 

 startle, perhaps, the belief of some, who have never 

 considered the subject, to assert, what is appa- 

 rently a fact, that a considerable portion of those 

 prodigious cliffs of chalk and calcareous stone, that 

 in many places control the advance of the ocean, 

 protrude in rocks through its waters, or incrust 

 such large portions of the globe, are of animal 

 origin the exuviae of marine substances, or the 

 labours of minute insects, which once inhabited the 

 deep. In this conclusion now chemists and philo- 

 sophers seem in great measure to coincide. Four- 

 croy observed, forty years ago, that " it could not 

 be denied, that the strata of calcareous matter, 

 which constitute, as it were, the bark or external 

 covering of our globe, in a great part of its extent, 

 are owing to the remains of the skeletons of sea 

 animals, more or less broken down by the waters ; 

 that these beds have been deposited at the bottom 

 of the sea, immense masses of chalk, deposited on 

 its bottom, absorb or fix the waters, or convert into 

 a solid substance part of the liquid which fills its 

 vast basin." Supplement to Chemistry, p. 263. 

 Such are the conclusions of philosophical investi- 

 gation ; and the discoveries of all our circumnavi- 

 gators fully corroborate these decisions as to forma- 

 tion. Revelation in part accounts for the removal 

 of these stupendous masses; though, probably, 



