538 MANUAL OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



PART III. 

 GEOLOGY. 



THE STRATA COMPOSING THE EARTH'S CRUST ARRANGED ACCORDING 

 TO THEIR RELATIVE POSITION. 



I. SECTION. — Descriptive Geology. 



That grand poem has not yet been written where- 

 in the wonders of the changing epochs of the world's 

 early history shall be pourtrayed, as by the pen of 

 some pre-adamite and gifted being, who, having 

 passed unscathed through al] the revolutions of our 

 planet, shall record the result of his kosmical expe- 

 riences. I have watched, he might declare, 



" The proteus shape of nature as it slept," 



and have seen the sullen ocean heaving waveless 

 over the heated, new-formed crust, and heard no 

 sound save the snap of armour-clad and buckler- 

 headed fishes, as they caught strange floating mol- 

 lusks swarming in the deeps, " their dark nativity/' 

 And, amid these fishes of surprising shapes — their 

 bodies covered with enamelled plates — were others, 

 shark-like, ravaging the waters of that wide ocean ; 

 while among the fuci and branching zoophytes that 



