256 GENERAL HKMARKS ON 



conditions, we cannot but infer that similar ones must 

 have existed among the primary, since these were once 

 under similar circumstances, though now affording us 

 no clue to those : whence it will be to take a very nar- 

 row or superficial view of the theory of even the earlier 

 rocks, to suppose that it is all comprised in those revolu- 

 tions which I formerly investigated. Yet let me premise 

 this. Whatever inferences may be drawn as to con- 

 ditions of the surface in this period, I cannot see that 

 we have any right to extend them more widely than 

 visible facts and fair analogies warrant. I have ren- 

 dered it probable that even the greater revolutions were 

 partial, tedious, and successive, being universal only 

 in their total results; and there is even less right to 

 infer that a theory of English or European strata is 

 to be a theory as to the whole earth, when the very 

 strata themselves are limited. 



The needful preliminaries to this enquiry are little 

 more than a restatement of what must already have 

 appeared, if dispersed! y, for other purposes. The are- 

 naceous and argillaceous rocks have been generated 

 from the ruin of former ones, and the limestones are 

 the produce of animals. A deep mass of the former, 

 unaccompanied by the latter, marks some condition 

 of the earth, at that place at least, where few animals 

 existed; a similar one of pure limestone bespeaks a 

 reverse condition, attended, in that place, at least, 

 again, by little degradation and deposition ; while the 

 mixed alternating strata demonstrate a corresponding 

 mixture of both sources of action. Further, where 

 any stratum contains terrestrial remains, of whatever 

 kind, it follows, that there, at least, it must have been 

 an actuary, or in some communication with the land, 

 under no deep sea. 



And lastly, considering that the degradation of land 



