522 



Causes of the Presence of Phosphates 



verted to beds of clay and marl) in all geological formations, since 

 the waters were first peopled with swimming creatures of ten 

 thousand kinds, with creeping things innumerable, both small and 

 great beasts. 



From the first creation of fishes to fill and multiply in the 

 waters, there must have been a never-ceasing deposition of phos- 

 phoric compounds in every bed of mud that was in progress of 

 accumulation at the bottom of all inhabited portions of seas, and 

 lakes, and rivers ; and thus the faecal dejections of all subaqueous 

 animated nature must, by their decomposition, have supplied 

 daily and hourly accessions of matter convertible to phosphorite. 



There must have been also a further never-ceasing supply of 

 phosphates from the decay of the bodies of all these animals after 

 their death, i. e., from the dead bodies of all fishes and molluscs 

 and sea-worms that were not devoured by other animals. 



From these twofold sources incessant additions of phosphoric 

 matter must at all times have been falling into decay, and mixing 

 phosphoric compounds with the earthy sediments at the bottom 

 of all inhabited waters ; and these incessant and almost univer- 

 sally diffused supplies of animal exuviae must, in the act of decom- 

 position, have been continually evolving phosphoric compounds 

 in the nascent state, which is the state most apt to enter into new 

 chemical combinations. 



Where the bottom of the sea was covered only with siliceous 

 sand, no phosphoric combinations could take place ; and hence 

 the barrenness of the great siliceous sandy deserts of the world ; 

 but wherever the bottom of the water contained (in an unconsoli- 

 dated state) the ingredients of future marl, or marlstones, or 

 septaria, conditions were present favourable to the formation of the 

 new combinations of phosphorite. 



Now, as both phosphate and carbonate of lime are soluble in 

 water charged with carbonic acid, and as carbonic acid is one of 

 the most abundant substances in nature, evolved under all kinds 

 of animal and vegetable decay, it follows that wherever decom- 

 position of faecal dejections, or of dead animals, or of sea-weeds 

 was going on, over the entire bottom of all the ancient seas, 

 and great oceans, beds of these cumulative additions, in every 

 day and every hour of antediluvian time, became the grand 

 receiver-general and cloaca maxima of the terraqueous globe, an 

 universal laboratory and conservative storehouse of universally 

 dispersed manurance for the future corn-fields and pastures of the 

 earth, when these ancient sea-bottoms should be raised up to 

 become dry lands, and in process of time be converted into vine- 

 yards and oliveyards, and lands of wheat and barley, for the sus- 

 tentation of man, and of land animals, of higher functions and 

 higher organization than those multifold generations of marine 

 reptiles, and fishes, and worms, and creeping things which were 



