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. They are always 
different in each 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 
uniform 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 Evidences 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 talc and rcpeati::g ourselves. 
(To he conliiiued.) 
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
Ry Dr. T. L. PflirsoN, of Pakis. 
Contents of three letters addressed to M. Elie de Beaumont — Lias forma- 
tion of the Col d'Encomlres {Alps) — Directions of the veins of lead 
and zinc ores in Prussia and in France — Geological incestigatiom in Chili 
— Silver and copper in the waters of the ocean — Whg there is no gold 
in them — Auriferous sand from the Isle of Bourhon — Effects of plutonic 
rochs 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 
Piedmontcse geologist, M. Sismonda, treats of the fossil beds of the Col 
