318 PALEONTOLOGY. 



also the knots. Even colour would appear to arise from this exactness 

 of disposition, for the layers are often of different colours, probably 

 similar to the original wood. If so, then colour arises more from the 

 mode of arrangement than from the kind of matter 1 ." — P. xxxix. 



" In peat, one could conceive that the trees had only to fall, and 

 afterwards to sink down into it ; but I believe no such wood grows in 

 peat, therefore they must have been brought there, and that only by 

 water ; or [they may have] grown there prior to the formation of peat. 

 But the a nim als which could come there had only to die on the surface, 

 and in time they would also sink deeper and deeper into it ; and this I 

 imagine might be the case with the beavers in this country, whose 

 bones are found in the peat-mosses in Berkshire. Or, as peat is sup- 

 posed to grow, we can conceive it rising higher and higher above such 

 substance. 



" Bones are also found in gravel, clay, marl, loam, &c. ; and as we 

 have found the sea-horse bones [Hippopotamus] in gravel, &c. in this 

 country, I am inclined to think that such situations have been shores or 

 arms of the sea, at last constituting mouths of rivers, where the animals 

 have been accidentally swept away by floods, accidentally drowned, <fec, 

 where gravel, clay, &c. have subsided, as before described ; for it gives 

 more the idea of being a consequence of the sea leaving the land than 

 an effect produced by a continuance of the sea in the part, according to 

 our idea of the formation of the true fossil. But the difficulty is to 

 apply this to the bones of some animals that do not now exist in the 

 same countries where they are found ; as also [to] the bones of animals 

 that probably do not now exist in any country. 



" This looks like a destruction of the whole species of such animals at 

 tbe time [during] which [those] animals were probably confined to such 

 countries ; and which might also be the case with the beaver in this 

 country ; and it being a more universal animal, its species is preserved 

 in other parts. The same observations apply to the sea-horse [Hippo- 

 potamus}, as also to the elephant." .... 



" Thus we have in many parts of this island the bones of unknown 

 animals, such as a large species of deer [Megaceros], as also the core of 

 the horns, and bones, of some very large animals of the bull-kind 

 [Bison prisms. Bos primigemtts]. 



1 [P. xl. I had determined arid named a large proportion of the vegetable fossils 

 of the original Hunterian collection, at the time when I resigned my offices in the 

 College of Surgeons, and when the completion of the Possil Catalogue was left to 

 others. I know not why all notice of these instructive fossils, together with the MS. 

 so frequently referring to them, should have been omitted in the third volume pub- 

 lished towards the close of that year.] 



