OF CREATION. 



77 



assert positively, with regard to this land, whether it 

 consisted of numerous small detached islands, or of 

 an archipelago with a few large islands, such as we 

 now have off the eastern coast of Asia. But this 

 depression was most likely succeeded by elevation; 

 and in whatever direction the new land appeared, 

 there are distinct indications of the deposit of very 

 thick and extensive beds of sandstone and grit hav- 

 ing preceded those muddy and fine sandy beds in 

 which the vegetable remains were chiefly preserved, 

 and which handed them down in vast abundance to 

 the later days of our earth's history. 



These unfossiliferous sandstones are chiefly exhi- 

 bited in the northern, though they are not absent in 

 the southern part of the great expanse of the carbo- 

 niferous rocks in England ; and they also cover almost 

 the whole of the mountain limestone of Ireland. 

 Some parts of the middle of England exhibit no traces 

 of them ; and the condition of the south Staffordshire 

 coal-fields, where the limestone is also absent, and the 

 coal-measures rest immediately on the old rock, offers 

 ample proof of the partial character of the deposit, 

 even if the very nature of coral reefs and islands did 

 not render probable the occasional absence of one 

 member of the series. It is, however, worthy of no- 

 tice, that in this middle district, where sometimes the 

 mountain limestone and sometimes the coarser grits 

 are absent, we find a thin but very well-marked band 

 of pale blue limestone, not coralline, but of distinctly 

 fresh-water origin, belonging to the upper and newer 

 beds of the coal-measures, and appearing at intervals 

 over an area whose extreme points are nearly a hun- 

 dred miles apart. 



