43$ ON THE GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS 



shells and the preservation of their minute parts, the 

 preservation of plants, especially of leaves, incapable 

 of bearing transportation, that of tender fishes, found 

 entire, as in Monte Bolca, and the positions of the 

 convexities of bivalves ; all of them being evidences 

 for any case, in practice, respecting which we may be 

 called on to judge. 



If, on the contrary, the reverse facts occur, mark- 

 ing motion, it is certain that no distant transportation 

 is necessary for the effects v as there may often be 

 fracture and dispersion of the objects, without any ; 

 while it is no less certain that such distant and vio- 

 lent ones as have been presumed, would have en- 

 tirely destroyed such objects, to their disappearance. 

 We know, through soundings, that recent shells are 

 broken and intermixed in the exact manner which 

 has, in fossil ones, been attributed to transportation ; 

 while the motions in these cases are but the daily 

 actions of the waves. And these are the germs of 

 future rocks, the types of past ones, as, at present, 

 they are those of visible alluvia. Such is the diffi- 

 culty of proving transportation in the ordinary cases 

 of fossil remains. Nevertheless., it has occurred, de- 

 monstrably, yet to no great extent : but the import- 

 ant question here is, the geological purpose in view- 

 in these hypotheses as they have been constructed and 

 used. 



This is double. It is to explain simply the positions 

 of organic fossils supposed to require explanation, but 

 it is, far more injuriously to science, to attempt to 

 prove deluges and other similar actions, through such 

 facts. And this is the proper geological question, as 

 it is the only one of moment. If I state examples of 

 the principal cases, and their presumed causes, and 

 also show that they can be explained by much sim- 



