24 FOSSIL MiVMMALIA. 



viously to those by which the strata containing such remains 

 have been denudated, and which were the latest by which this 

 earth has been convulsed. 



It only remains for us now to give a summary view of the 

 succession of strata, and an enumeration of the diiFerent fossil 

 genera and species in the respective strata, by the order of 

 wliich we are enabled to calculate to a certain extent the 

 number of revolutions the globe has undergone. In doing 

 this, we shall pursue the order observed by the Baron in his 

 great work. 



In speaking of the strata of which this globe is composed, 

 we must be understood to mean here nothing more recent than 

 that formation which is proved to have resulted from the last 

 grand catastrophe by which the earth was overwhelmed. The 

 strata then formed, the most superficial of the regular strata, 

 consisting of beds of loam and argillaceous sand, mixed with 

 rolled pebbles from remote regions, and filled with debris of 

 land animals unknown, or foreign to the places in which they 

 are found, appear to have covered all the plains, and the floors 

 of the caverns, and choked up the fissures of the rocks within 

 their reach. To such formations. Dr. Buckland has given the 

 name of diluvium^ and described them with his usual clearness 

 and accuracy. They must be considered as totally distinct 

 from the other strata, which, like them, are equally loose, but 

 have been continually deposited, by streams and rivers, in the 

 usual course of nature, since the last great convulsion of the 

 globe, and which contain no fossil remains, but such as are 

 indigenous to the country where they are found. These last 

 depositions Dr. Buckland distinguishes by the term alluvium^ 

 and they must be considered as entering for nothing into the 

 question of the grand revolutions of the earth. But in the 

 diluvial strata, all modern geologists have discovered the 

 clearest evidence of that tremendous inundation, which consti- 

 tuted the last general catastrophe by which the surface of our 

 ])lanct has been modified. It may not be amiss to inform our 



