OF THE ORGANIC FOSSILS. 441 



remark ou this system would have been spared had it 

 come from a less name: the mischief lies in this very 

 thing, in the authority; which, ever injurious in pro- 

 portion to its weight, is still weighty on this very point, 

 injuring him whom it is the duty of a systematic 

 writer to protect from false theories. 



The animals in question died and were buried where 

 they lived. If they are covered with beds of sand and 

 clay, sometimes containing shells, this is what happens 

 in every land of rivers ; and as far as the bones them- 

 selves are transported, this is their only source of trans- 

 portation. Natural actions or casual inundations ac- 

 count for every thing : but they account too simply : 

 they are not Theories of the Earth. The shells are 

 terrestrial, and they have been supposed marine: the 

 perpetual error of those who philosophize in shells and 

 thus determine Earths. Let there be marine alluvia 

 any where, it is the case of deserted aestuaries. Nor 

 is there any reason why the Lena or the Jenisei should 

 not carry even colonies of skeletons to the sea itself, 

 since this very event has happened in the Solway 

 firth within our own knowledge. 



Enough of these cases ; they are examples to which 

 all of which I read can be reduced. Of the causes of 

 such imagined torrents, the following have been as- 

 signed ; and I may here name what, for the most part, 

 must be re-examined hereafter. The supposed erup- 

 tion of the Black sea and of the presumed lake of 

 Thessaly, are among these ; and there are modern 

 examples of such a fact, inferred in such a valley as 

 Glen Roy, proved to the sight in Switzerland. Un- 

 questionably, such accidents must have transported 

 fossil remains, with all else ; yet shells are little likely 

 to have survived such movements as this. Let them 

 have all their weight, and they may explain a few 



