8 LIME, 



Lime, and siliceous substances, compose a very 

 large portion of the dense matter of our earth ; the 

 shells of marine animals contain it abundantly ; our 

 bones have eighty parts in one hundred of it ; the 

 egg-shells of birds above nine parts in ten during 

 incubation, it is received by the embryo of the bird, 

 indurating the cartilages, and forming the bones. 

 But the existence and origin of limestone are pre- 

 eminent amongst the wonders of creation; nor 

 should we have been able, rationally, to account 

 for the great diffusion of this substance throughout 

 the globe, however we might have conjectured 

 the formation, without the Mosaical revelation. It 

 may startle, perhaps, the belief of some, who have 

 never considered the subject, to assert what is ap- 

 parently a fact, that a considerable portion of those 

 prodigious cliffs of chalk and calcareous stone, that 

 in many places control the advance of the ocean, 

 protrude in rocks through its waters, or incrust 

 such large portions of the globe, are of animal 

 origin the exuviae of marine substances, or the 

 labours of minute insects, which once inhabited the 

 deep. In this conclusion now chemists and philo- 

 sophers seem in great measure to coincide. Four- 

 croy observed, forty years ago, that tf it could not 

 be denied, that the strata of calcareous matter, 

 which constitute, as it were, the bark or external 

 covering of our globe, in a great part of its extent, 

 are owing to the remains of the skeletons of sea 

 animals, more or less broken down by the waters ; 



