538 MANUAL OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



PART III. 

 GEOLOGY. 



THE STRATA COMPOSING THE EARTH'S CRUST ARRANGED ACCORDING 

 TO THEIR RELATIVE POSITION. 



I. SECTION. DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 



THAT grand poem has not yet been written where- 

 in the wonders of the changing epochs of the world's 

 early history shall be pourtrayed, as by the pen of 

 some pre-adamite and gifted being, who, having 

 passed unscathed through all the revolutions of our 

 planet, shall record the result of his kosmical expe- 

 riences. I have watched, he might declare, 



" The proteus shape of nature as it slept," 



and have seen the sullen ocean heaving waveless 

 over the heated, new-formed crust, and heard no 

 sound save the snap of armour-clad and buckler- 

 headed fishes, as they caught strange floating mol- 

 lusks swarming in the deeps, " their dark nativity/' 

 And, amid these fishes of surprising shapes their 

 bodies covered with enamelled plates were others, 

 shark-like, ravaging the waters of that wide ocean ; 

 while among the fuci and branching zoophytes that 



