Proceedings of the British Association. 137 



supplying new links and analogies to the zoologist in his classifica- 

 tion. Passing southward, we find the same series of rocks enor- 

 mously developed, in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties, 

 becoming finer in their composition, as if leaving the coast, and ap- 

 proaching a deeper sea ; and still further south, in Devon and Corn- 

 wall, we find the same rocks, occupying the same place in the series, 

 assuming a new mineral type and swarming with animal existence. 

 If we look to other countries we find still this formation, containing 

 the same remarkable fish spread over large regions in Russia and 

 America, and, indeed, wherever geological investigations have been 

 carried. In almost all this series of rocks there is no such cement- 

 ing lava streams as the Dean supposes ; rocks do occur, though 

 there are numberless examples of disrupting igneous action. With 

 respect to the inversion of strata at Malvern, which the Dean thinks 

 inexplicable by any forces which geologists can bring to bear, it 

 happens to be no uncommon occurrence. In Liege the very miners 

 are perfectly familiar with this circumstance, and the certainty of the 

 fact may be at all times ascertained by following the inverted beds 

 along their strike, till, after various changes and contortions, they at 

 length assume their true position. Passing on towards the coal 

 strata, we find thick beds of limestone and grit, with which the coal 

 is found almost universally to be associated. The extent of the coal 

 formation itself, in various parts of the world, is much more wonder- 

 ful and difficult of explanation, than its absence from other regions. 

 I cannot stay now to inquire into the causes which promoted its for- 

 mation at this particular period, but when I remind you that it is 

 thousands of feet thick, that the beds of coal themselves are acknow- 

 ledged by botanists and chemists to be entirely formed of masses of 

 vegetables swept down into the sea by annual torrents, or the growth 

 of ages in peat bogs and forests, and the deltas of rivers, that it con- 

 tains the fronds and stems of hundreds of ferns and other plants, 

 all of extinct species, and requiring for their growth a climate widely 

 differing from our own, it does indeed seem scarcely worth while 

 arguing against a theory which attributes these extensive and com- 

 plicated phenomena to the " mud thrown up by a volcano, and 

 catching the leaves of trees in its descent !" Again, passing on to 

 the new red sandstone, with its tracks, of peculiar and extraordinary 



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