FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 



103 



spots the lands was still gradually rising or sinking, the sediments 

 still falling on shores and sea-beds, and adding new strata to the 

 ancient rocks, or being slowly lifted out of the waters, to form 

 fresh fields and mountains. The order was not broken, it was only 

 continued elsewhere. 



And thus, too, we pass upwards, through that second world and that 

 third world, to the present world, stage by stage, to find newer creations 

 entombed in the newer beds ; for, although the sands, clays, and lime- 

 stones may repeat themselves in their peculiarities of structure, the 

 the embedded species of animals and plants never do. TJwij are always 

 different in eaoh succeeding stage, however like are the conditions of the 

 rocks. So, too, as we pass upwards through periods of ages, ever and 

 ever it is from the waste of older lands, from the wear and tear of pre- 

 existing materials that the newer soils are formed — only the older 

 deposits were less elaborated by repeated regenerations, were more 

 uaiform in their characters over extended areas. All the limited 

 notions of the popular belief respecting the age and antecedents of our 

 planet are as totally crushed by the Ev^ideuces of the Rocks as they are 

 by the testimony of their fossils. Coast-lines have altered, and lands 

 which were are lands no more ; sea-beds have been changed into verdant 

 fields, and where the shell-fish crawled, now grows the yellow corn. 



What fossils teach us of former worlds of life, the rocks teach us of 

 former worlds of land and sea, until we seem almost to be telling the 

 same tale and repeating ourselves. 



{To he continued.) 



FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 

 By Dr. T. L. Phipson, of Paeis. 



Contents of three letters addressed to M. Elie de Beaumont — Lias forma- 

 tion of the Col d' Enconibres i^Alps) — Directions of the veins of lead 

 and zinc ores in Prussia and in France — Geological investigations in Chili 

 — Silver and copper in the waters of the ocean — Why there is no gold 

 in them — Auriferous sand from the Isle of Bourlon — Effects of plutonic 

 roclcs on lignite, coal, anthracite, and graphite. 



At one of the recent meetings of the Academy of Sciences, M. Elie de 

 Beaumont noticed three letters which he had received that, from their 

 geological interest, we will briefly refer to here. — The first, from the 

 Piedmontese geologist, M. Sismonda, treats of the fossil beds of the Col 



