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served. On the contrary fossil remains fre 

 quently disappear. And what is more, this 

 disappearance is by no means on a small scale. 

 Darwin himself admits that " Shells and bones 

 decay and disappear when left on the bottom 

 of the sea, where sediment is not accumulat 

 ing." Again he holds that " remains which be 

 come imbedded in sand or gravel will, when 

 the beds are upraised, generally be dissolved 

 by the percolation of rain water charged with 

 carbolic acid/ Spencer, as we have seen, 

 claimed that " the records which remain bear 

 but a small ratio to the records which have been 

 destroyed," and ascribes the destruction to 

 igneous action. He tells us that "Many sedi 

 mentary deposits have been so altered by the 

 heat of adjacent molten matter, as greatly to 

 obscure the organic remains contained in them." 

 And he adds, "The extensive formation once 

 called 'transition, ' and now renamed 'metamor- 

 phic,' are acknowledged to be formations of 

 sedimentary origin, from which all traces of 

 such fossils as they probably included have 

 been obliterated by igneous action. And the 

 accepted conclusion is (hat igneous rock has 



