NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 25 



draw from the observations every day made, that great changes 

 have formerly taken place in our globe, and "much wreck been made 

 of its vegetable produce. 



The plains and secondary mountains, contain within them a large 

 quantity of petrified bones, shells, and animals. In schistus and" 

 sand-stone, there are impressions of various plants. These all pro- 

 claim the revolutions which our globe has undergone. But how 

 was this powerful catastrophe brought about, or when did it happen? 

 To these questions we want proofs to enable us to return a satisfac* 

 tory answer, and must be content to confess our ignorance. 



Meanwhile, however, naturalists have not been idle. They have 

 carefully collected the remarkable symbols of former times, and 

 compared them with the organic productions of the present- At 

 first they expected to find many of these again; but they were unable 

 to explain how it was possible for the elephant, the rhinoceros, and 

 hippopotamus to live and prosper in our climates, and in the cold 

 of Siberia ; or how palms and various Alices could inhabit our 

 northern regions. They endeavoured by many an ingenious hypo- 

 thesis to account for this ; but some of these were contradicted by 

 the discovery of new petrifactions, and others had so little proba. 

 bility, that they went counter to all the known laws of nature. 



Enquirers, however, were at last convinced, by many observa- 

 tions, that the petrified remains of animals, as well as the impres- 

 sions of plants, belonged to subjects not now to be found alive on 

 our globe. 



Cuvier possesses a number of the remains of quadrupeds which 

 do not now exist. By conchology we learn that those bivalve 

 shells, which are found in a petrified state, are never to be met with 

 recent : and the beautiful Alices we see in schistus, the trunks o( 

 trees which are changed into coal, or petrified wood, even in the 

 frigid zones, where cold suffers no tree to grow, are now no where 

 to be found in a living state. 



Accordingly, the most celebrated naturalists, as Blumenbach, 

 Batsch, Lichtenberg, and Cuvier, jvith many others, have drawn this 

 highly probable conclusion, that at least one creation has been lost, 

 and that the present organic world is a new formation. 



They leave to the Natural Philosopher and Astronomer to ac- 

 count for these stupendous phenomena ; but they believe that, per- 

 haps the brilliant nimbus of the sun, by whose benign influence we 



