412 
SECOND REPORT— 1832 . 
age the recurrence of violent convulsions were again to sub¬ 
merge Europe and Australia, and cover their surface with 
fresh sedimentary depositions, these new formations, though 
absolutely contemporaneous, would, in either continent, (should 
they again be laid dry and exposed to observation,) be found to 
exhibit in the organic bodies thus imbedded, differences to the 
full as marked as those, which, in the same continent, charac¬ 
terize formations of the most distant ages. Now' with regard 
to the secondary rocks of distant countries, our information is 
as yet far too limited to enable us to return, to the above ques¬ 
tions, answers on which we can rely with any degree of con¬ 
fidence : but the evidence, as far as it goes, does undoubtedly 
again seem to indicate a greater degree of resemblance than 
we could have reasonably anticipated : this may particularly be 
instanced wuth regard to the older rocks containing organic 
remains, e. g. the transition limestone : w 7 e are extensively ac¬ 
quainted with this rock in Russia, in the islands of the Baltic, 
in Scandinavia, and in North America; and its fossils every¬ 
where exhibit so near a generic resemblance, that it w ould often 
puzzle even a practised eye, if two groups of specimens, one 
from Dudley and another from Melville Island, were placed 
before him, to say which specimen came from which locality : 
the same Cateniporae, Caryophyllias, and Encrinites, being pre¬ 
sent in both. The fossil vegetables of the coal-fields of Europe 
and America also appear very similar; but we shall probably 
often, on a more accurate investigation, observe specific differ¬ 
ences combined with generic resemblances : still, undoubtedly, 
the impression on my own mind, from a tolerably careful exami¬ 
nation of all the specimens I have hitherto seen, is, that a much 
nearer approximation may be observed betw'een the fossil animals 
and vegetables of the old and new" continents than betw'een those 
occupying them at the actual period. And, what is peculiarly 
important, we find, as I have already observed, even in the 
highest latitudes of the arctic ocean, types which appear charac¬ 
teristic of a tropical temperature; and the general diffusion of 
those types in the rocks of the transition and carboniferous 
periods, in wdiatever latitude they are found, appears to imply a 
much greater equality of temperature to have then prevailed than 
in the present state of things. It seems also inconsistent with the 
existence of these beings that such wide variations of temperature 
between the different seasons should then have occurred, as must 
necessarily accompany, in high latitudes, any temperature de¬ 
rived entirely from the sun,—a consideration which renders in¬ 
applicable to this case the hypothesis, that the higher tempera¬ 
ture required by geological inferences, may be accounted for by 
the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, since this 
