MINERALOGY. 393 



their nature, and passed into the fossil state, and having 

 undergone an alteration into stony particles, preserve the 

 skeleton entire, showing no dislocations or other marks of 

 injury, -which would contradict the generally received 

 opinion that death had overtaken them in some sudden 

 revolution. 



From a configuration of the sedimentary, and particu- 

 larly the primary or stratified rock formation,* in which 

 no fossil remains of organic bodies are found, it has been 

 inferred at this epoch the first geological no living 

 beings existed on the surface of the globe, and that until 

 the fourth epoch,f in which space man was created, the 

 earth was (as described in the Mosaic record) without 

 form and void, an extended plain, the dry land raised but 

 little above the surface of the sea, and consisted mostly, 

 it is supposed, of muddy ground. A thick crust of rocks, 

 minerals, and earths, melted into a liquid mass by the 

 action of its internal heat, and kept in a state of constant 



* The Sedimentary Formations are those which are deposited by 

 the action of the water and stratified. The primary or stratified rocks 

 are those in which neither organic remains nor fragments of the most 

 ancient rocks are found. This group includes gniess, mica-schist, 

 quartz, transition schist, limestone, etc. Ruschenberger. 



) The organic creation is divided into four successive and also ra- 

 tional epochs. The first established vegetative life, or life of nutrition, 

 which is manifested not only in plants, but also in the inferior animals, 

 iu which we find scarcely any other phenomena than that of nutrition, 

 growth, etc. Afterwards came the life of relation, or sensibility, 

 instinct, intelligence, and will, successively added, in different propor- 

 tions, to the phenomena of simple existence. This new life first takes 

 a certain development in fishes (including reptiles no doubt); then 

 birds, which, together, constitute the second epoch of creation. It 

 acquired a new extension in mammals, -which appeared at a third 

 epoch, and finally reached its highest degree in man, with whom ter- 

 minated the work of the Omnipotent, receiving a soul in the image of 

 God, to distinguish him from all other creatures. RUSCHEX. Tr. 



17* 



