101 
OOLITE AND LI A*. 
The blue Lias has strange revelations to 
make of marvellous animal remains, outrival- 
ling all the dragons and centaurs of fable ; 
the Oolite too is so crowaled with ocean 
shells, that many of its layers are like the 
drawers of a rich well-arranged cabinet. 
Their vegetation includes both aquatic and 
terrestrial plants, corresponding to a fauna, 
which includes the nautilus, the saurian, and 
the opossum. The harmless newt of our 
ditches hardly differs more from the shark¬ 
like crocodile of the Lias, than the species of 
vegetation now" trimly adorning the surface 
from that which the quarries lay bare. Were 
it not that in this and in all our researches 
into the former condition of the earth, we 
are met by overvvhelming proofs of the 
perfect adaptation of created things to each 
other, and to their locality, and of an exact 
optimisiu in their actual structure, w^e might 
dream of the fables of eastern mythology, 
and imagine a change in the government 
of the universe; but fossil geology is ot all 
other sciences the best able to assure us of 
the constancy of God in his works^ and thus 
to afford us a world-wide foundation for 
