34 $. II. RELICS. Introduction 



In still more recent strata, formed in this manner* 

 the bones of such land-animals would also be de- 

 posited, as the earth, in this period of its existence, 

 was fitted for supporting. ff 



c. 15. Rivers, currents and modern lakes. The 

 influence of these, in the immediate deposition of 

 organic remains among mineral matter, is only to 

 be traced in those accumulations of sand, gravel, 

 clay, &c. which are evidently the production of 

 the third period, f f f 



The organic remains found in such situations are> 



stances) appear to have grown on the very spot in which their re- 

 mains are now intombed. 



ft These animals, as already remarked, must have been at this 

 period but sparingly distributed over the earth, since their remains 

 occur so rarely and only in the most recent of the strata, of the 

 formation we are now considering Had they been long created, 

 or had they, at this epoch of time, existed in considerable num- 

 bers, their relics would now, doubtless, be as common in such 

 strata, as they are in the more irregular and superficial alluvial 

 beds of the succeeding (3d.) period. 



f-ff It is not, that we suppose rivers not to have existed during 

 the second period, that we have confined their operations to the 

 third: on the contrary it is highly probable that they began to 

 flow long before the sea gained its present limits ; and, perhaps, it 

 would not be going too far, to assert with Dr. Hutton, that " on 

 our continent there is not a spot on which a river may not formerly 

 have run/' (Theory of the Earth, vol. 2, p. 234) But the loose 

 and irregular depositions, from streams and currents of these early 

 ages, must long since have been obliterated by that waste and de- 

 gradation, to which even the most solid strata (the productions 

 of deep and still waters) have been subject. 



