Masterpieces of Science 



time Nature has added a page to her archives; 

 but, in reference to this subject, it should be re- 

 membered that we can never hope to compile a 

 consecutive history by gathering together monu- 

 ments which were originally detached and scat- 

 tered over the globe. For, as the species of 

 organic beings contemporaneously inhabiting 

 remote regions are distinct, the fossils of the first 

 several periods which may be preserved in any 

 one country, as in America for example, will have 

 no connection with those of a second period found 

 in India, and will therefore no more enable us to 

 trace the signs of a gradual change in the living 

 creation, than a fragment of Chinese history will 

 fill up a blank in the political annals of Europe. 



The absence of any deposits of importance 

 containing recent shells in Chili, or anywhere on 

 the western coast of South America, naturally 

 led Mr. Darwin to the conclusion that "where 

 the bed of the sea is either stationary or rising, 

 circumstances are far less favourable than where 

 the level is sinking to the accumulation of con- 

 chiferous [shell-bearing] strata of sufficient 

 thickness and extension to resist the average vast 

 amount of denudation." In like manner the beds 

 of superficial sand, clay, and gravel, with recent 

 shells, on the coasts of Norway and Sweden, 

 where the land has risen in Post-tertiary times, 

 are so thin and scanty as to incline us to admit a 

 similar proposition. We may in fact assume 

 that in all cases where the bottom of the sea has 

 been undergoing continuous elevation, the total 

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