THE GEOLOGIST. 



^27 



LiQH 7. Shells imbedded in a stratum of mud, all on one lercl, shewing the destruction of tke 

 molluscs by a catastrophe. 



that narrow line at once speaks of the catastroj^he — it is the 

 mausoleum of young and old alike. A stoim, a poisonous influ- 

 ence, an inundation of mud or oose may equally have effected this ; 

 but whatever was the cause the myriads were cut off at once and 

 suddenly. 



One bed of rock may immediately overlie another, and 

 yet a great interval may have occiured between them. The dis- 

 tance of one bed from the other in time, may be a thousand years 

 — or more. It may be ages, — or it may be but a day. The intimate 

 particles of which they are composed may be silent upon this, the 

 one may present a harder face or more consolidated constitution 

 than the other, but of time they tell us nothing. What are days or 

 years, minutes or hours, to the senseless particles diifted about by 

 the changeful seas ? Time was, however, to the perished shell- 

 fish; they might not have measured it by months or years, by 

 days or nights, but timed were their Lives, and their species. 

 They were not in their generations from the beginning imtil now, 

 but they appeared and disappeared as the succession of the beds 

 continued, and thus each great period of Geology had its creation 

 of animated beings and vegetation, its fauna and flora distinct 

 and appropriate — even as ours are now. One after another have 

 these creations passed away, and in consequence of the suc- 

 cessive upheavals and depressions of the land, the lines of 

 level of different shells in a quarrj' may, nay, often do, 

 note the demarcation of enormous periods — periods of mar- 

 vellous ages — from each other. Xor do shell-fish only tell 

 their tales of those remote times. The bright and scaly 

 fish, decomposing on the ocean's bed, has left a few and scattered 

 scales, to mark its existence and decay ; or a few isolated teeth, 

 may be of sharks, or other predaceous fish, torn from theii' jaws by 

 the struggling prey, are sufficient to record the ferocious instincts 



