396 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



icate parts are, often, perfectly preserved ; animals, with all their 

 organs entire, and plants with their fibres and leaves in full expansion. 



Occasionally, however, we find one stratum with its included 

 mineralized organic bodies entire, and a contiguous one having them 

 more or less broken, mutilated and dispersed. 



Both the plants and animals, belong generally to races which are 

 no longer found alive, or if analogous races exist, they are related 

 to the ancient ones, rather by generic than by specific characters. 

 These ancient animals, are commonly either zoophytes or, shell fish ; 

 always having a simple structure, and in many instances, they are 

 destitute, or nearly so, of the power of locomotion ; sometimes, how- 

 ever, they are furnished with organs for that purpose. Madrepores 

 and encrinites, could move very little ; the echinus, found abundant- 

 ly in the chalk, a very recent rock of the secondary class, moved 

 on his spine, which served him for a foot, and some of the early 

 shell fish, had organs to^ enable them to rise and fall in the wa- 

 ter. Sometimes, rocks rich in entombed animals, occupy great dis- 

 tricts of country. In the transition marble for instance, animals repo- 

 sing in the bowels of mountains, miles from day light, often form al- 

 most the entire mass, and they are so firmly united to the rock, as to 

 constitute a part of its substance. Many of the architectural marbles 

 owe much of their beauty to imbedded animals, myriads of which lie 

 almost in absolute contact ; the matter of the rock between them, only 

 filling up the void occasioned by their angular and confused positions. 



The trilobite is one of the early fossilized and imbedded animals ; 

 this animal, having in his back, a jointed articulation, could bend his 

 body like a lobster, and we find him sometimes doubled, and some- 

 limes expanded, as he lies in the rocks.* 



Possible Mode of Consolidation. 



There is little difficulty in understanding how the marine animals, 

 for example, the crinoidea that fill, more or less, the transition lime- 

 stone of the Peak of Derbyshire, came to be thus entombed. We cannot 



* Grand trilobites, of singular size and perfection, were shown me by the late 

 Mr. John Sherman, at Trenton Falls, near Utica, (New York,) where they were 

 obtained. Dr. Eights, of Albany, in a voyage to New South Shetland, found the 

 trilobite, still a living animal. Prof. Green, of Philadelphia, has illustrated this 

 interesting family by a valuable monograph and admirable models, moulded and 

 colored; in exact fac simile, with the originals. 



