402 APPENDIX. 



sphere, of rains, of frost probably, and to the action also of the 

 waters with their contents still incumbent on the earliest strata, 

 would furnish masses and particles washed away, which would 

 mingle with the deposits of the transition series. This series, 

 therefore, will exhibit appearances of mechanical and chemical 

 intermixture of earths and stones, such as are found in the silicious 

 porphyries, the graywackes, the silicious and argillaceous horn- 

 blende rocks, the elder red sandstone, &c. During the period 

 when these transition formations were deposited, there would be 

 no land animals, for there would be no vegetables for them to 

 feed upon. There would be no vegetables unless some few lichens, 

 mosses, or ericas, that would find foothold upon the slight decom- 

 position that, after the lapse of some ages, would take place on 

 the surface of the primitive rocks. The sea only would be peo- 

 pled, and that but sparingly; for, in that mass of muddy water, 

 none but the lowest and most infierior grades of animal life, and 

 such as do not inhabit deep water, could exist. Hence, we find 

 the transition formations contain in their substances some belem- 

 nites, asterise, entrochi, echini, &c., but no organized vegetable 

 substance except, very rarely, in the latest rocks of this series, 

 and no remains whatever of terrestrial animals. Indeed, in the 

 high latitudes of the outgoings or summits of the primitive strata, 

 very few vegetables, even at the present day, can live. No vege- 

 tation fit for animal life could take place until the transition, and 

 most of the next series of secondary or jioetz formations had sub- 

 sided. These would occupy lower and lower situations, till a rich 

 soil, from every kind of intermixture of earth mechanically de- 

 posited, would afford a proper temperature of region, and an easily 

 decomposed soil, wherein vegetables could grow. 



"Next to the transition series, come the secondary^ or, as the 

 German mineralogists call them, ihefloetz rocks; so called, because 

 they appear to be more floated or horizontal, though I confess 

 the appellation does not appear to me peculiarly appropriate. 

 These strata consist principally of sandstone, limestone — some- 

 times fetid from bituminous impregnations, sometimes shelly — 

 secondary greenstone, graphite, coal, gypsum, rock salt. I have 

 observed that the Alpine heights of the primitive mountains 

 could at no time furnish much food. The same remark, but in 

 a less degree, will apply to the transition range; the low and 



