AND FRESH-WATER FORMATIONS. 323 



Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bohemia. They have fur- 

 ther been observed in the west of Italy, in Spain, at 

 Salonica, near Corinth, and near Constantinople. In 

 South America, they occur near Cumana, at Porto 

 Cabello, Cartagena, and Santa Fe de Bogota, as also 

 in Guadaloupe ; and many have also been named in 

 Northern America and Asia. 



But this is an indiscriminate mass, according to the 

 views here entertained ; and there is little reason to 

 doubt that they contain examples of what I have in- 

 cluded and what I have here separated. But it is not 

 my business to analyze bad observations, or to do 

 what the reporters have not ; it is sufficient that I 

 have shown, in the preceding chapter, an example of 

 such analysis, and that the means of examining and 

 arranging them are furnished by the present one. As 

 far as it is safe to conjecture, those of Switzerland are 

 lacustral and fresh-water deposits; those of Wallachia 

 and Moldavia may be only aestuaries of the present 

 sea, those of Italy are apparently the very strata de- 

 scribed in the last chapter, and those of Auvergne may 

 have been elevated ones ; but whether basin-shaped or 

 not, remains to be examined. Let it be remembered, 

 that the interesting questions for geology are, not the 

 nature of the deposits simply, and far less that of 

 their remains : it is the mode of their formation, and 

 their ages, especially as concerned with the last revo- 

 lutions of the Earth ; since that forms the great point 

 of interest. 



But if geology has hitherto occupied itself chiefly 

 with petty circumstances, the pursuit of specimens, not 

 of science, the facts on which science builds, it is true, 

 but which are of no value without the building, thus, 

 under its favourite bias to universal formations, has it 

 also attempted to unite remote deposits of this nature 



