GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



OF THE YORKSHIRE COAST. 



PART II. 



ORGANIC REMAINS. 



Jr ETRIFIED or preserved remains of the animals and vegetables 

 of a former world, are so commonly met with in the rocks of almost 

 all countries, that they have attracted the attention of the learned in 

 every age. Herodotus, the father of Greek historians, mentions in 

 his Second Book (Euterpe), the existence of sea shells in the moun- 

 tains of Egypt. Strabo, in the First Book of his Geography, speaks 

 of petrified cockles, oysters, pectines, and other shells, observed in 

 various regions remote from the sea ; which statement he makes, not 

 only on his own authority, but on that of more ancient Greek writers. 

 Pliny, in his Natural History (Lib. xxxvii. c. 10), notices the cornu 

 ammonis, the ostracite, and other petrifactions ; and in another pas- 

 sage (Lib. xxxvi. c. 18) he mentions, on the authority of Theophrastus, 

 am ancient Greek naturalist, the discovery of fossil ivory and 

 petrified bones. Tertullian, one of the christian fathers, observes in 

 his treatise De Pallio (c. 2), that the ^hole globe was onCe covered 

 vdth waters, and that sea shells yet lodge in the mountains. Oro- 

 sius, another early christian writer, speaking of the deluge, in the 

 First Book of his History, mentions, as a proof of that catastrophe, 



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