, GEOLOGY. 621 



are found in the soil were carried thither by the sea, 

 which of old occujiied the place where we find them. 

 It was this humble and fervent man who thus became the 

 founder of positive geology. 



But whilst the different fossiliferous rocks were beinc 

 deposited, whilst the earth was renewing its living races, 

 plutonic forces, in ceaseless agitation, from time to time 

 shook the crust of the globe, or fractured it in various places. 

 Its fragments formed our mountains, and these, issuing 

 from the depths of the seas, bore aloft to the regions of 

 the clouds the charnel-houses of the animals which had 

 formerly peopled their abysses. 



When Buffon in his turn came to the support of the 

 view that the shells scattered over the summits of the 

 Alps and Apennines only proved that the globe had under- 

 gone con\Tilsions, he found himself contradicted where no 

 person could have expected it. This was by Voltaire, 

 who in his Physique attacked with biting sarcasm those 

 who adopted this opinion. He maintained that all the 

 shells found on our mountains had been scattered there by 

 pilgrims on their return from Eome. Only a few words 

 were needed to have silenced the immortal writer, but these 

 few words Buffon never uttered. He could have told him 

 that we find these fossil vestiges everywhere, even in the 

 two Americas, whither certainly these pious travellers 

 never carried them; whilst, on the other hand, there are 

 even imposing chains of mountains which are absolutely 

 formed of shells.^ 



Notwithstanding the perfect preservation of many fos- 



^The idea of ascribing to the pilgrims from Rome the fossil shells foiuid in 

 the mountains was not long upheld by the philosojjher of Feruey. He shrank 

 from the idea of seriously embroiling himself with the illustrious overseer of the 

 Jardiii des Plantes. "I do not," he said, "wish to quarrel with M. BufFou about 

 shells." — Voltaire, Physique, chap, xv., "Des Singularitcs de la Nature." 



