OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 283 



evidences of former life and habitation which or- 

 ganised remains imbedded and preserved in its 

 strata indisputably afford. 



(315.) Records of this kind are neither few nor 

 vague ; and though the obsoleteness of their language 

 when we endeavour to interpret it too minutely, may, 

 and no doubt often does, lead to misapprehension, 

 still its general meaning is, on the whole, unequi- 

 vocal and satisfactory. Such records teach us, in 

 terms too plain to be misunderstood, that the whole 

 or nearly the whole of our present lands and con- 

 tinents were formerly at the bottom of the sea, 

 where they received deposits of materials from the 

 wearing and degradation of other lands not now 

 existing, and furnished receptacles for the remains 

 of marine animals and plants inhabiting the ocean 

 above them, as well as for similar spoils of the land 

 washed down into its bosom. 



(316.) These remains are occasionally brought 

 to light ; and their examination has afforded indubi- 

 table evidence of the former existence of a state of 

 animated nature widely different from what now 

 obtains on the globe, and of a period anterior to that 

 in which it has been the habitation of man, or 

 rather, indeed, of a series of periods, of unknown 

 duration, in which both land and sea teemed with 

 forms of animal and vegetable life, which have suc- 

 cessively disappeared and given place to others, 

 and these again to new races approximating gra- 

 dually more and more nearly to those which now in- 

 habit them, and at length comprehending species 

 which have their counterparts existing. 



(317.) These wrecks of a former state of nature. 



