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Ch. V.] 



ANCIENT AND MODERN CAUSES. 



103 



demonstrate the existence of all the worlds said to have been 



annihilated. 



Such popular prejudices would be most unfavourable to the 

 advancement of astronomy ; for, instead of persevering in the 

 attempt to improve their instruments, and laboriously to 

 make and record observations, the greater number would de- 

 spair of verifying the continued existence of the heavenly 

 bodies not visible to the naked eye. Instead of confessing 



remove 



more 



employment of framing: ima 



mierhtv revolutions m the system 



of the universe. 



more 



m two centuries the shelly strata of the 

 Subappenine hills afforded matter of speculation to the early 

 geologists of Italy, and few of them had any suspicion that 

 similar deposits were then forming in the neighbouring sea. 

 They were as unconscious of the continued action of causes 

 still producing similar effects, as the astronomers, in the case 

 above supposed, of the existence of certain heavenly bodies still 

 giving and reflecting light, and performing their movements as 

 of old. Some imagined that the strata, so rich in organic 

 remains, instead of being due to secondary agents, had been 

 so created in the beginning of things by the fiat of the 

 Almighty. Others, as we have seen, ascribed the imbedded 

 fossil bodies to some plastic power which resided in the 

 earth in the early ages of the world. In what manner 

 were these dogmas at length exploded? The fossil relics 

 were carefully compared with their living analogues, and all 

 doubts as to their organic origin were eventually dispelled. 

 So, also, in regard to the nature of the containing beds of 

 mud, sand, and limestone : those parts of the bottom of the 



examined where shells are now becomin 



to 



entombed in new deposits. Donati explored the bed of 



the Adriatic, and found the 



resemblance between 



the strata there forming, and those which constituted hills 

 above a thousand feet high in various parts of the Italian 

 peninsula. He ascertained by dredging that living testacea 

 were there grouped together in precisely the same manner 





