98 Observations Conccrnimr Fossil Organic Remains. 



Q 



not form In geology a special epoch. Without delaying to 

 prove this principle by farther arguments, it shall suffice me 

 to cite a single fact. The strata at Calabria have been these 

 thirty-eight years, the scene of the most frightful disorder; 

 horizontal beds have become vertical ; entire strata have 

 been transported to a distance and deposited upon those 

 which are different; yet no geologist has proposed to regard 

 these facts as proofs of a diti'erent geological epoch. For a 

 change in organized species, circumstances of a very differ- 

 ent nature, and catastrophes much more general and of a 

 longer duration would be requisite: in a few days the strata 

 of Calabria have shown us derangements similar to those we 

 witness among the Alps ; whilst, five or six thousand years 

 have not given rise to any appreciable difference in the 

 forms, and other characters of organized species. 



" I do not however mean to assert that characters taken 

 from the relative situation of strata, (but not from i\\en evident 

 superposition.) from their very nature, ought not to be em- 

 ployed with confidence by the geologist in the determination 

 of the different epochs of formations. Alone, or united to 

 those we draw from the nature of fossil remains, they are of 

 the highest value ; but I merely contend, and I think I have 

 given reasons sufficiently weighty for my belief, that when 

 these characters are in opposition to those we obtain from 

 the presence of organic remains, the last ought to Ivive 

 the precedence. 



" N^or do 1 conceal that it is necessary to bring the greatest 

 circumspection to the use of these characters; I am aware 

 that it is necessary to know how to distinguish and calculate 

 the influence of distance and of climate upon the different 

 species ; that it is necessary to be able to appreciate the ap- 

 parent and sometimes real resemblances which occur in 

 formations evidently quite distinct, and to recognize some 

 species which have enjoyed the rare privilege of surviving 

 the destruction of their contemporaries, and of constantly 

 remaining the same, amidst all those catastrophes which 

 have taken place around them. 



" I am not ignorant either that it is also necessary to know 

 how to distinguish those individuals which have been detach- 

 ed from other strata, and brought by some cause or other into 

 those which are more recent, and how to separate them from 

 those which have lived in places, and at epochs, which the 

 species to which they belong ought to characterize. I under- 



