PART I. CHAPTER I. 17 



Aqueous Origin of certain Rocks. 



table, which has been buried in the earth by natural causes. 

 Now the remains of animals, especially of aquatic species, are 

 found almost everywhere imbedded in stratified rocks. Shells 

 and corals are the most frequent, and with them are often asso- 

 ciated the bones and teeth of fish, fragments of wood, impres- 

 sions of leaves, and other organic substances. Fossil shells of 

 forms such as now abound in the sea, are met with far inland, 

 both near the surface and at all depths below it, as far as the 

 miner can penetrate. They occur at all heights above the level 

 of the ocean, having been observed at an elevation of from 8000 

 to 9000 feet in the Alps and Pyrenees, more than 13,000 feet 

 high inthe Andes, and above 15,000 feet in the Himalayas. 



These shells belong mostly to marine testacea, but in some 

 places exclusively to forms characteristic of lakes and rivers. 

 Hence, we conclude that some ancient strata were deposited at 

 the bottom of the sea, while others were formed in lakes and 

 estuaries. 



When geology was first cultivated, it was a general belief that 

 these marine shells and other fossils were the effects and proofs of 

 the general deluge. But all who have carefully investigated the 

 phenomena have long rejected this doctrine. A transient flood 

 might be supposed to leave behind it, here and there upon the 

 surface, scattered heaps of mud, sand, and shingle, with shells 

 confusedly intermixed ; but the strata containing fossils are not 

 superficial deposits, and do not cover the earth, but constitute the 

 entire mass of mountains. It has been also the favourite notion 

 of some modern writers, who are aware that fossil bodies cannot 

 all be referred to the deluge, that they, and the strata in which 

 they are entombed, may have been deposited in the bed of the 

 ocean during a period of several thousand years which inter- 

 vened between the creation of man and the deluge. They ima- 

 gine that the antediluvian bed of the ocean, after having been 

 the receptacle of many stratified deposits, became converted, at 

 the time of the flood, into the lands which we inhabit, and that 

 the ancient continents were at the same time submerged, and be- 

 came the bed of the present sea. This hypothesis, however 

 preferable to the diluvial theory, as admitting that all fossiliferous 

 strata were slowly and successively thrown down from water, is 

 yet wholly inadequate to explain the repeated revolutions which 

 the earth has undergone, and the signs which the existing con- 

 tinents exhibit, in most regions, of having emerged from the 

 ocean at an era far more remote than four thousand years from 

 the present time. It will also be seen in the sequel, that many 

 distinct sets of sedimentary strata, each several hundreds or 

 thousands of feet thick, are piled one upon the other in the earth's 



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