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CHAPTER III. 
Organic Remains of the Eastern Part of Yorkshire. 
T hat vegetable and animal remains should be enclosed in bard rocks, 
in prodigious abundance and of exquisite beauty, has been a subject of 
admiration from very early periods. The difficulty of conceiving how 
the rocks could be so softened and dissolved by the deluge, (to which all 
geological phenomena were attributed in the 17th century,) as to admit 
shells and plants into their substance, induced Plot and Llwyd, and even 
Ray and Lister, to deny that these fossil bodies had ever been living 
beings. This absurdity gradually yielded to the talent and industry of 
Woodward ; and is remembered only to be ridiculed. It is now univer- 
sally admitted by naturalists that fossils are the reliquiae of beings once 
endowed with life ; and that all the difference in appearance, between 
them and analogous recent objects, has been caused by circumstances 
attendant on their long sepulture in the earth. 
The earth contains reliques of perhaps the most ancient plants and 
animals which existed on this globe, and they lie enclosed in rocks of 
different chemical composition, at various depths and of unequal anti- 
quity. According to their original qualities, and the circumstances in 
which they were placed, fossils have undergone different changes of sub- 
stance. 
Few organic bodies are preserved in the earth, except such as were 
orio-inally of a durable constitution. Remains of plants are common 
in coal districts, wood is found in many limestone rocks, nuts and hard 
fruits have been obtained from the Isle of Sheppey ; zoophytes of many 
kinds fill our limestone and sandstone rocks ; thus the horny substance 
of spongia?, and the calcareous mass of corals is accurately preserved ; 
the columns of crinoidal animals, and the hard crusts of echini are very 
