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Ch. XIV.] 



THE SEQUENCE OF FORMATIONS. 



319 



But, 



themselves, both in the organic and inorganic world, 

 besides that some links of the chain which once existed are 

 now clearly lost and others concealed from view, we have 

 ;-ood reason to suspect that it was never complete originally. 



It may 



strata have been always 



som 



time nature has added a page to her archives ; but, in refer- 

 ence to this subject, it should be remembered that we can never 

 hope to compile a consecutive history by gathering together 

 monuments which were originally detached and scattered 

 over the globe. For as the species of organic beings con- 

 temporaneously inhabiting remote regions are distinct, the 

 fossils of the first of several periods which may be preserved 

 in any one country, as in America, for example, will have no 

 connection with those of a second period found in India, and 

 will therefore no more enable us to trace the signs of a 

 gradual change in the living creation, than a fragment of 

 Chinese history will fill up a blank in the political annals of 

 Europe. 



The absence of any deposits of importance containing 

 recent shells in Chili, or anywhere on the western coast of 

 South America, naturally led Mr. Darwin to the conclusion 



' where the bed of the sea is either stationary or rising 

 circumstances are far less favourable than where the level is 

 sinking to the accumulation of conchiferous strata of sufficient 

 thickness and extension to resist the average vast amount 

 of denudation.'* In like manner the beds of superficial 

 sand, clay and gravel, with recent shells on the coasts of 

 Norway and Sweden, where the land has risen in Post-tertiary 

 times, are so thin and scanty as to incline us to admit a 

 similar proposition. We may in fact assume that in all cases 



that 



bottom 



sedimentary matter 

 )itation of most of tl 



of shells can never be great, nor can the deposits be thickly 

 covered by superincumbent matter, so as to be consolidated 

 by pressure. When they are upheaved, therefore, the waves 

 on the beach will bear down and disperse the loose materials ; 



* Darwin's S. America, pp. 136, 139. 



