THEORY OF THE EARTH. 119 



sertion is still subject to doubt. * The same has 

 been the case with the articles of human fabrica- 

 tion. The pieces of iron found at Montmartre 

 are fragments of the tools which the workmen 

 use for putting in blasts of gunpowder, and which 

 sometimes break in the stone f . 



Yet human bones preserve equally well with 

 those of animals, when placed in the same circum- 

 stances. In Egypt, no difference is remarked be- 

 tween the mummies of men and those of quadru- 

 peds. I picked up, from the excavations made 

 some years ago in the ancient church of St Ge- 

 nevieve, human bones that had been interred be- 

 low the first race, which may even have belonged 

 to some princes of the family of Clovis, and which 



a travertin, in which are imbedded shells of the neighbouring 

 sea, and land-shells, which are still found alive in the 

 island, namely, the Bulimus guadalupensis of Ferussac. 



* See M. de Schlotheim's Treatise on Petrifactions, Go- 

 tha, 1820, p. 57 ; and his Letter in the Isis of 1820, 8th 

 Number, No. 6. of Supplement. 



t It is perhaps proper that I take notice of those frag- 

 ments of sandstone, regarding which some noise was at- 

 tempted to be made last year~(1824), and in which a man 

 and a horse were alleged to have been found petrified. The 

 mere circumstance of its being a man and a horse, with their 

 flesh and skin, that these fragments must have represented, 

 might have enabled every one to perceive that the whole was 

 a mere lusus nature? t and not a true petrifaction. -Note L. 



