71 



Little doubt can be entertained, of the moory islets of Sutton 

 being a part of this extensive and subterraneous stratum, which, by 

 some inroad of the sea, has, in that part, been stripped of its cover- 

 ing of soil. Sufficient reasons for this opinion, the Doctor thinks, 

 are yielded by the identity of the levels, as well as that of the species 

 of trees; the roots of these being affixed, in both, as to the soil 

 where they grew; and, above all, the flattened shape of the trunks, 

 branches, and roots, found in the islets, which can only be accounted 

 for by the heavy pressure of a superinduced stratum. Such a 

 wide spread assemblage of vegetable ruins, lying almost in the 

 same level; and that level generally under the common mark of 

 low-water, must naturally strike the observer, and give birth to the 

 following questions : 1. What is the epoch of this destruction ? 

 2. By what agency was it effected ? 



Whilst endeavouring to answer these questions, the learned writer 

 supposes, the fossil remains of vegetables, hitherto dug up in so 

 many parts of the globe, to belong to two different states of our 

 planet. The parts of vegetation, and their impressions, found in 

 mountains of cetaceous, schistous, or even sometimes of a calcare- 

 ous nature, are chiefly of plants now existing between the tropics ; 

 which could neither have grown in the latitudes, in which they are 

 dug up ; nor have been carried and deposited there by any of the 

 acting forces, under the present constitution of nature. The forma- 

 tion, indeed, he justly remarks, of the very mountains in which they 

 are buried ; and the nature and disposition of the materials which 

 compose them, are such as we cannot account for by any actions, 

 and reactions, which in the actual state of things, take place on the 

 surface of the earth. 



The consideration of this order of fossil vegetables obliges us, in 

 the opinion of Dr. de Serra, to recur to that period in the his- 

 tory of our planet, when the surface of the ocean was at least so 



