CONCHOLOGY, 



former ages. The highest mountains have undoubtedly 

 been covered or enveloped for a certain time, by the waters 

 of the ocean, by some great external revolution, and the sea 

 has served no doubt as a vehicle to convey these submarine 

 vestiges to parts, where the human mind would least expect 

 to find such an assemblage, in beds of clay, of chalk, or 

 limestone, and in short almost every variety of situation. 



At Grignon, about seven leagues from Paris, innumer- 

 able Fossil Shells have been found in a bed of calcareous 

 sand. At Courtagnon also near Rheims, in a sand bank of 

 a more silicious nature than at Grignon. In Hampshire 

 also, and the Isle of Wight, at Greenwich and Brentford 

 numerous quantities of shells have at various times been 

 found, inclosed in deep beds of gravel 30 or 40 feet deep. 



Lamarck observes that the Fossil Shells of France and 

 England are all of similar genera, and related to each other 

 exactly in their form ; the variety however of the French 

 Fossils seems to be greater, several species of them have an 

 exact resemblance in form and size, so that they seem to 

 have been deposited by one general involution of the sea. 

 It is very natural to suspect that they were brought from 

 some very distant seas or coasts, and this has been indeed 

 the general opinion of writers upon this subject, as we have 

 no recent species in our own seas which by any means 

 resemble them in the specific form : nevertheless many of the 

 genera of Fossil Shells have a distant affinity to the recent 

 kinds, at present discoverable in the Southern Seas, and 

 which by analogy indeed may be said to prove (if such 

 proof will be allowed) that the immense oceans of the South- 

 ern part of the World, are the depository or storehouse 

 from whence these shells were originally driven to our 

 northern latitudes, and there left by the retiring of the 

 waters. These shells are scattered partially over particular 



i 



