APPENDIX. 401 



in their situations. These strata are not only the deepest, but 

 they are also the highest that are observable in the crust of the 

 earth ; forming the tops of the highest mountains. They are cha- 

 racterized by an appearance of crystallization, and by containing 

 no remains of organic matter, animal or vegetable. The strata or 

 formations that in general constitute this first, deepest, highest, 

 and crj'stallized series, are granite, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, 

 primitive greenstone, granular limestone, serpentine, porphyry, 

 and sienite. These formations are so generally found, and in the 

 same situations as incumbent upon or subtending each other rela- 

 tively, that they may be considered as universal. Their crys- 

 tallized appearance shows that their particles have either been 

 dissolved or very finely suspended in water, so that the attraction 

 of crystallization has been free to operate; that this water has 

 been deep, so that the lowermost parts of it have not been much 

 agitated during the crystallization, which would otherwise have 

 been more confused than it is; and, indeed, the oldest formations 

 are the best crystallized. A part of the water covering the 

 nucleus must have been taken up, as water of crystallization, in 

 the primitive formations. When these were deposited, there were 

 no vegetables formed; of course, no animals; nay, even the sea 

 was unpeopled, for there is no trace of any organic remains in 

 these strata. Even the belemnites, the asterite, the echini, the 

 entrochi, the most simple forms of oceanic animal life, do not 

 occur until the transition strata appear. Hence the propriety of 

 denominating these formations 2^™nitive. 



"By processes of nature, besides the consumption of water by 

 the new crystallized masses, to us unknown, the waters appear to 

 have diminished. The highest parts of the primitive formations 

 became the shores to the water superincumbent on their bases 

 and middle regions; the simplest forms of oceanic animals came 

 into existence; the mosses and lichens of high latitude would 

 generally occupy the surface of the primitive strata, gradually 

 decomposed by the alternate action of air and water after many 

 ages. Daring this period, while the strata were in a state of 

 transition from the chaotic to the habitable state, other deposits 

 would gradually be made from the waters, now decreased in quan- 

 tity, and take their place below the summits of the primitive 

 range. Those summits being exposed to the action of the atmo- 

 26 



