FOSSIL INVERTEBRATED ANIMALS. 469 



consequently with the traditions which constitute the basis 

 of our modern rehgious creeds. A crowd of authors have 

 dilated upon it with a spirit of rivalship in absurdity never to be 

 sufficiently admired. Some, as we have observed before, 

 would have it, that these fossils were mere sports of na- 

 ture, the result of the corruption of stones ; others, of a 

 loftier vein, attributed their production to the stars, and, more 

 especially, to the rays of the moon, which were in the habit 

 of eating the stones, — an odd species of banquet enough for 

 such a subject, and which reminds us of Nat. Lee's project, — 



** To fatten padlocks with Antarctic food." 

 These and such like errors were for a long time accredited, 

 and propagated even down to the middle of the last century, 

 at which time, also, some explications of the formation and 

 depositions of fossils were presented to the world, scarcely less 

 remarkable for singularity than the foregoing, and equally false. 

 Voltaire, for instance, who, with all his genius, was exceed- 

 ingly superficial in scientific subjects, has speculated on this 

 as erroneously as he has done on many others. But such 

 reveries were speedily dissipated by the sudden light thrown 

 upon the natural sciences towards the close of the eighteenth 

 century. Patient and judicious observation has evinced, that 

 the buried or petrified remains of organized beings are the 

 result of a series of revolutions of the globe, more or less 

 numerous. Some of them were, to all appearance, general, or 

 nearly so, since the marine debris have been deposited as far as 

 an elevation of more than 7200 perpendicular feet above the 

 natural elevation of the sea ; others were partial, such as those 

 from which originated the fossils which we attributed to the 

 fresh water ; others, we find, resulted from the eruptions of 

 volcanos, the lava of which had caused considerable spaces of 

 soil where organized bodies, animal or vegetable, were found. 



A question has been raised on this subject, involving some 

 degree of interest. It is this : — " Are new fossils still being 

 found in our present days ?" Voltaire cites the example of a 



