421 ON THE GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS 



examined : a stronghold has here been erected on 

 mud, in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense. 

 With the few exceptions already noted, their remains 

 are now found in alluvial soils, on the land ; and it 

 could not have been otherwise in former times. If 

 rivers deposit the materials of future rocks under the 

 sea, they very rarely carry thither the bones of land 

 animals. The geologists of a future earth might de- 

 termine, as we do now, that marine animals alone 

 had formerly existed. If animals are to be preserved 

 in rocks, for future ages, they must be preserved 

 where they died. Hence is it that we find the re- 

 mains of amphibious animals, and not those of ter- 

 restrial ones ; for the same would happen, or does 

 happen, at this very day. They were enclosed at 

 once in mud, like shells, and preserved from de- 

 struction. And hence the simple solution of the won- 

 derful mysteries of the Lias and its Lizards, which 

 are to prove equally wonderful mysteries about an 

 antient earth. There was a dry earth long before 

 and long after these beds ; or whence are the strata 

 from Coal to Chalk ? He who can believe that this 

 earth contained nothing but Lizards, and during one 

 period only, has thought too much of his specimens : 

 what could be preserved has been embodied in stone, 

 and all else has perished : it has ever been so, and 

 ever will. The preserved animals differ from the 

 present ; that is all ; but that is a separate question. 



This was the essential preliminary question ; for it 

 was that of the value of the Evidence. If we now 

 examine the preserved animals, they do not prove 

 any thing as to a successive improvement of organi- 

 zations. There are identical or corresponding genera 

 in the most antient and the most recent strata. Echi- 

 nites, charriites, tellinites, ammonites, and others, 



