Dr Fleming on the Revolutions m the Animal Kingdom. Ill 
this statement, many naturalists have concluded, either that 
these organic remains must have been brought into their present 
situation, by some violent means, from tropical regions, or that 
our country once enjoyed the warmth of a tropical climate. The 
tenderness and unbroken state of the parts of these remains, and 
a variety of circumstances connected with their position, intimate 
the absurdity of the first supposition, and the truths of astrono- 
my give ample discouragement to the latter. It would have 
been wiser to have examined all the conditions of the problem 
before attempting its solution, than rashly suffer the imagination 
to indulge in speculation and conjecture. Had this examination 
taken place, we venture to assert that the conclusion, that fossil 
shells, and other relics, must have been, while recent, the na- 
tives of a warm country, would never have been announced as 
an article of the creed of any geologist. 
As the opinion here advanced is very different from that 
which is received by some authors, it seems necessary, before 
giving the proofs of its truth, to trace those circumstances which 
have operated in leading into error. 
The shells and corals w T hich are found in a fossil state, have 
probably been quoted more frequently, as proofs of the truth of 
the popular opinion on the subject, than any other class of re- 
lics. Now, here it may be observed, that for upwards of two 
centuries past, collections of tropical shells and corals have been 
forming in this country, and on the continent of Europe. Du- 
ring this period the native productions have been examined and 
collected by few. It therefore happened, that the tropical tes- 
tacea and zoophytes, were better known than those of temperate 
regions. An observer, finding a fossil shell or coral, had it not 
in his power to compare them with the productions of his coun- 
try, in public collections, or in the descriptions and engravings 
of books on natural history. He could compare them with the 
figures or specimens of foreign species only, and if he discover- 
ed an agreement in the external appearance of a species, or even 
a genus, might be led to conclude, that he had found a tropical 
shell or coral in a fossil state in Great Britain. A few hasty exami- 
nations of this kind, in which remote analogies were suffered to be 
considered as proofs of identity, and the indications of a genus 
mistaken for the marks of a species , could not fail to lead the 
