LIME. 
14 
parently a fact, that a considerable portion of those pro- 
digious cliffs of chalk and calcareous stone, that in many 
places control the advance of the ocean, protrude in 
rocks through its waters, or incrust such large portions 
of the globe, are of animal origin — the exuviae of marine 
substances, or the labors of minute insects, which once 
inhabited the deep. In this conclusion now chemists 
and philosophers seem in great measure to coincide. 
Fourcroy observed, forty years ago, that “ it could not 
be denied, that the strata of calcareous matter, which 
constitute, as it were, the bark or external covering of 
our globe, in a great part of its extent, are owing to the 
remains of the skeletons of sea animals, more or less 
broken down by the waters ; that these beds have been 
deposited at the bottom of the sea, immense masses of 
chalk, deposited on its bottom, absorb or fix the waters, 
or convert into a solid substance part of the liquid 
which fills its vast basins .” — Supplement to Chemistry , 
p. 263. Such are the conclusions of philosophical in- 
vestigation ; and the discoveries of all our circumnavi- 
gators fully corroborate these decisions as to formation. 
Revelation in part accounts for the removal of these 
stupendous masses ; though, probably, unrecorded con- 
cussions since the great subversion of our planet have, 
in remote periods, effected many of the removals of 
these deposits. We find the basement of many of the 
South Sea Islands, some of which are twenty miles long, 
formed of this matter. Captain Flinders, in the gulf of 
Carpentaria, held his course by the sides of limestone 
reefs, five hundred miles in extent, with a depth irregu- 
lar and uncertain ; and still more recently Captain 
King, seven hundred miles, almost a continent, of rock, 
increasing, and visibly forming : — all drawn from the 
waters of the ocean by a minute creature, that wonder- 
ful agent in the hands of Providence, the coral insect. 
This brief account of the origin of calcareous rocks 
was, perhaps, necessary before mentioning an extraor- 
dinary fact, that, after the lapse of so vast a portion of 
time since the basement of the mighty deep was heaved 
on high, existing proofs of this event should remain in 
our obscure village. 
