OF CREATION. 75 



time thus indicated, there may have existed in our 

 latitudes a shallow sea bottom, well adapted in some 

 places for the foundation of coral reefs, and probably 

 resembling the shallows upon which similar circlets 

 of coral islands have been built in the Pacific Ocean. 

 Upon such banks, and on a sinking continent, the 

 coral animals of the ancient seas seem gradually but 

 steadily to have reared their eternal monuments of 

 labour, and thus there grew up in the course of ages 

 those numerous and often detached, but always simi- 

 lar limestones, which may be traced very readily both 

 in the British Islands and in other parts of the world. 

 In our own country they extend from South Wales 

 and the neighbourhood of Bristol northwards, bear- 

 ing a little to the east, and although often cover- 

 ed up by newer beds, they still form the predo- 

 minating rocks in the counties of Derbyshire, Lan- 

 cashire, Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland. 

 To the west the same rock recurs, possessing all its 

 most striking features ; and though only exposed in 

 certain limited districts, yet it exists over the greater 

 part of Ireland, although there, as in many parts of 

 England, it is frequently covered up or replaced by a 

 coarse sandy grit, unlike the old red sandstone, and 

 generally known amongst Geologists as the millstone 

 grit. 



Whilst the coral limestones were thus being built 

 up in the seas which then covered our island, there 

 seems to have been a tract of land extending to the 

 west, ranging both north and south from England, 

 and also from the western coast of what is now 

 Ireland. In evidence of this, we find that the lowest 

 beds of the carboniferous period in the north-west of 



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