186 
GENERAL VIEWS. 
sion so generally admitted that the organic exuviae remain on the very 
spot where the animals liyed and died ; but it would be unreasonable 
to imagine that they can have been subjected to much violence of water : 
they consequently inform us what were the inhabitants of the sea in 
which the mountain limestone formation was deposited. 
We may next attend to circumstances likely to give information as 
to the mechanical agencies exerted in this sea. At the base of the system 
the old red sandstone shews by its conglomerate beds, laminated mi- 
caceous gritstones, and the fragments of land plants which lie in some 
of them, decided evidence of violent watery movements. The limestone 
resting on grauwacke betrays the same agency, in its included boulders 
and pebbles of slate, and disturbed corals, (Moughton scar) : but the 
whole mass above, for several hundred feet, shews not the least trace 
of any such watery disturbance. W e must admit, therefore, the ocean 
to have been here devoid of any unusual agitation during its deposition. 
This is fully corroborated by all that is known of the rock in other 
localities. The same conclusion applies to all the calcareous strata of 
the Yoredale series; for the fragmentary state of the crinoidal remains 
in the Cam limestones requires no supposition of agitation in the sea 
beyond that which must always have been felt along its shores. 
Where not much intermixed with grits and shales the mountain lime- 
stone is pure carbonate of lime ; some of the beds are crystallized ; and 
the general tendency of observation goes certainly to establish the con- 
clusion that this limestone is an original deposit from the waters of the 
ocean, — not by desiccation, but by a chemical decomposition of the fluid, 
arising from some widely diffused and long continued agency. 
What was that agency ? I can only offer a conjecture that it was a 
liquid or gaseous substance generated in the submarine oceanic laboratory 
of nature, diffused through the waters of the sea, from one or many 
openings on its bed, and causing similar decompositions at a nearly uni- 
form rate through long periods of time. The precipitates thus occasioned 
would be liable to lateral movements corresponding to the ordinary and 
