BY THE AGENCY OF WATER. 127 
by water that any remains of land animals can 
have been preserved. 
We continually see the carcases of such ani- 
mals drifted by rivers in their seasons of flood, 
into lakes, estuaries, and seas ; and although it 
may at first seem strange to find terrestrial 
remains, imbedded in strata formed at the bottom 
of the water, the difficulty vanishes on recollec- 
tion that the materials of stratified rocks are 
derived in great part from the Detritus of more 
of the atmosphere, and become the nucleus of a sand hill ; 
which the wind accumulates around them. Beneath this sand 
they remain interred like the stumps of palm trees, and the 
buildings of ancient Egypt. 
In a recent paper on the geology of the Bermudas (Proceed- 
ings of Geol. Soc. Lond. Ap. 9, 1834), Lieutenant Nelson 
describes these islands as composed of calcareous sand and 
limestone, derived from comminuted shells and corals ; he con- 
siders great part of the materials of these strata to have been 
drifted up from the shore by the action of the wind. The 
surface in many parts is composed of loose sand, disposed in 
all the irregular forms of drifted snow, and presents a surface 
covered with undulations like those produced by the ripple of 
water upon sand on the sea shore. Recent shells occur both in 
the loose sand and solid limestone, and also roots of the Palmetto 
now growing in the island. The N. W. coast of Cornwall 
affords examples of similar invasions of many thousand acres 
of land by Deluges of sand drifted from the sea shore, at the vil- 
lages of Bude, and Perran Zabulo ; the latter village has been 
twice destroyed, and buried under sand, drifted inland during 
extraordinary tempests, at distant intervals of time. See Trans, 
of Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, vol. ii. p. 140. and vol. iii. p. 12. 
See also De la Beche's Geological Manual, 3rd edit. p. 84, and 
Jameson's Translation of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 5th ed. 
Note G. 
