THEORY OF THE EARTH. 15 



that these animals were destroyed, and the coun- 

 try which they inhabited became covered with ice. 

 This event has been sudden, instantaneous, with- 

 out any gradation ; and what is so clearly demon- 

 strated with respect to this last catastrophe, is not 

 less so with reference to those which have pre- 

 ceded it. The breaking to pieces, the raising up 

 and overturning of the older strata, leave no doubt 

 upon the mind that they have been reduced to 

 the state in which we now see them, by the action 

 of sudden and violent causes ; and even the force 

 of the motions excited in the mass of waters, is 

 still attested by the heaps of debris and rounded 

 pebbles which are in many places interposed be- 

 tween the solid strata. Life, therefore, has often 

 been disturbed on this earth by terrible events. 

 Numberless living beings have been the victims 

 of these catastrophes ; some, which inhabited the 

 dry land, have been swallowed up by inundations ; 

 others, which peopled the waters, have been laid 

 dry, from the bottom of the sea having been sud- 

 denly raised ; their very races have been extin- 

 guished for ever, and have left no other memorial 

 of their existence than some fragments, which the 

 naturalist can scarcely recognize. 



Such are the conclusions to which we are ne- 

 cessarily led by the objects that we meet with at 

 every step, and which we'can always verify, by ex- 

 amples drawn from almost every country. These 



