ORGANIC REMAINS. 



13 



compose nearly the whole substance of a bed of limestone of great 

 thickness, as is the case with the beds of encrinal limestone in Der- 

 byshire, and the limestone called coral-ragg at Steeple Ashton. 



The fossil remains of animals not now in existence, entombed 

 and preserved in solid rocks, present us with durable monuments of 

 the great revolutions which our plane thas undergone in former ages. 

 We are carried back to a period when the waters of the ocean cov- 

 ered the summits of our highest mountains, and are irresistibly com- 

 pelled to admit one of two conclusions, — either that the sea has re- 

 tired and sunk far below its former level, or that some power, ope- 

 rating from beneath, has lifted up the islands and continents, with 

 their hills and mountains, from the watery abyss, to their present 

 elevation above its surface. 



These organic remains present also undeniable proofs of another 

 fact equally interesting. Every regular stratum in which they are 

 disseminated was, once, the uppermost rock, however deep it may 

 be he\o\Y the present surface, or with whatever rocks it may now be 

 covered. This inference is not the less conclusive, whether we sup- 

 pose that the animals lived and died where their remains occur, or 

 whether they were aggregated and carried by marine currents into 

 their present situation. Hence we learn, that the secondary strata 

 were formed in succession over each other, and thus these fossil re- 

 mains preserve the records of the ancient condition of our planet, 

 and the natural history of its earliest inhabitants. The unknown 

 causes by which zoophytes and different genera and species of testa- 

 ceous animals, of reptiles, vegetables, and mammiferous quadrupeds 

 were buried in different strata, have operated in succession at distant 

 intervals of time ; we do not find the remains of different classes 

 confusedly intermixed together, except in beds of clay or gravel, 

 near the surface, or in fragments of various rocks which have been 

 broken down and subsequently united. Bones of vertebrated animals, 

 or such as had a brain and spinal marrow, have never been found in 

 the lower strata, except of a few species of fish ; nor have the bones 

 of large mammiferous quadrupeds ever been discovered, below the 

 chalk. Hence we acquire a perfect certainty, that the different beds 

 which form the crust of our planet were deposited in distant epochs, 

 and under different conditions of the globe. The animal remains in 

 some of the strata are so delicate, and so regularly deposited, that 

 we can have little doubt that the animals lived and died tranquilly 

 where their remains are now found : in other strata, the remains are 

 dispersed and broken, and the animals appear to have perished by 

 some sudden convulsion. 



If the bones of man, or of mammiferous quadrupeds, resembliiii; 

 existing species, have been found casually witfi fossil remains peculiar 

 to the lower or more ancient strata, I believe a careful examination 

 of all the circumstances, would generally explain the apparent anom- 

 aly. 1 shall state a remarkable fact of this kind, which came to my 



