XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 347 



animals are imbedded. There are some specimens 

 in which turtles' eggs have been imbedded in 

 calcareous sand, and before the sun had hatched 

 the young turtles, they became covered over with 

 calcareous mud, and thus have been preserved 

 and fossilised. 



Not only does this process of imbedding and 

 fossilisation occur with marine and other aquatic 

 animals and plants, but it affects those land 

 animals and plants which are drifted away to sea, 

 or become buried in bogs or morasses; and the 

 animals which have been trodden down by their 

 fellows and crushed in the mud at the river's 

 bank, as the herd have come to drink. In any of 

 these cases, the organisms may be crushed or be 

 mutilated, before or after putrefaction, in such a 

 manner that perhaps only a part will be left in 

 the form in which it reaches us. It is, indeed, a 

 most remarkable fact, that it is quite an exceptional 

 case to find a skeleton of any one of all the 

 thousands of wild land animals that we know are 

 constantly being killed, or dying in the course of 

 nature : they are preyed on and devoured by 

 other animals, or die in places where their bodies 

 are not afterwards protected by mud. There are 

 other animals existing on the sea, the shells of 

 which form exceedingly large deposits. You are 

 probably aware that before the attempt was made 

 to lay the Atlantic telegraphic cable, the Govern- 

 ment employed vessels in making a series of very 



