situations much higher than the sea; and not unfrequently on the sides and even summits of mountains. Some mountains in Chili1 are formed entirely of shells; few of which are in a state of decomposition: and on the Descaheyado,2 one of the Andes, not much inferior to Chimborazo, are oysters and periwinkles, calcined and petrified.

Bivalve shells have been also found on Mount St: Julian in Valencia, enclosed in beds of gypsum, surrounded by detached pieces of slate: and petrified sea substances in a mine of virgin mercury in a steep hill near San Felippe. And in a crag of marble on Mount Olympus has been observed petrified fishes, three hands long, and three fingers broad, with gills clearly discernible.

Though shells have been observed in all ages to be component parts of mountains, Bernard Palassy was the first, who asserted them to be real shells; and that they had once been inhabited by fishes:-and he defied the schools of Paris and all the arguments of the followers of Aristotle to prove the contrary.These beds of shells are sometimes discovered in positions horizontal, undulated and vertical: and so thick as not only to check, but to suffocate vegetation.

They are frequently divided into strata, the lower one consisting of shells, unlike those now found in the sea; the upper resembling those generally known. The latter circumstance fully refutes an argument, which might be drawn from the supposition, that the 2 Molina, i. 50.

1 Molina, i. 52. Ulloa.

3 Turner Levant. iii. 185.

former were the remnants of earthly animals now unknown. These antediluvian monuments a French writer would call "medals, commemorating the deluge."

III.

In Iceland, large logs of wood have been found in soil of considerable depth; and in Ireland have been dug up enormous antlers of an elk, extending fourteen feet from tip to tip'. This is an animal now entirely

unknown.

The jaw of an elephant was found in Iceland: two teeth of an hippopotamus were discovered thirty feet beneath the soil at Brentford, in the county of Middlesex; and the remains of an elephant were also discovered imbedded in a rock, which fell over the beach at Mundesley in the county of Norfolk. Teeth of sharks, too, have been found at Hindershelf in Yorkshire; in the mines of Cornwall large timber trees, even at the depth of fifty fathoms and bones of the crocodile and the mammoth have been discovered in the Isle of Wight. In Siberia3 bones of the Arctic elephant are found by persons digging wells:and at the foot of a mountain of ice in North-West America, Kotzebue found fragments of animals, with

:

The French geologists will not allow these to belong either to the elk, or rein-deer; but to a wholly unknown class also the deer of Scania; and the large buffalo of Siberia. The Irish antlers were found in alluvial earth beneath peat moss.

2 Phil. Mag: vol. lii. p. 68.

3 Nov. Comm: de ossibus Siberia fossillibus.

teeth similar to those seen in such vast quantities in Siberia, and on the shores of the Tartarian Sea.

In the coast of Lincolnshire are large relics of submarine forests. The skeleton of a species of crocodile,' now in the British Museum, was dug up in Nottinghamshire; a similar skeleton in a quarry near Caen in Normandy; and fossil bones of an immense lizard have been dug up near Maestricht: in Sweden, leaves of pine and cones of fir have been found imbedded even in iron ore.

3

On the clefts of the calcareous rocks ofGibraltar2 are found brecchia, penetrated with bones of carniferous and herbivorous animals ;-elephants' bones near the Toledo gate at Madrid, and in the village of Concud, as well as in many other parts of Spain, have been dug out of the earth fossil bones of various descriptions. Indeed, many rocks of that country seem to be almost entirely composed of river and oceanic 'shells, mixed with bodies beneath other rocks in beds

1 Philosoph. Trans. vol. xxx. p. 963.

2 Cuvier has some curious remarks on the osseous conglomerate, or brecchia, found in the limestone rocks and hills of Gibraltar ;— Cette ;-Nice and Antibes ;-Corsica ;-Dalmatia ;-Cerigo ;-Concud in Arragon ;-and in the Vicentine and Veronese districts. Upon these phenomena he remarks, that the osseous brecchia, not formed by a tranquil sea, or by a sudden irruption of it, are posterior to the last resting of the ocean on our Continent:-that the wellascertained bones belong to herbivorous animals:-and that the greater number belong to animals, now existing in the neighbouring country. 3 Dillon's Trav., p. 227. 4to. 1780.

* Professor Jameson, p. 294.

of blackish earth. Even cornuæ ammonis, which are natives of very deep oceans, have been found in elevated regions. On the calcareous strata, near Bezieres in France, are large beds of oysters and an assemblage of marine petrifactions have been discovered in the heart of a marble quarry near Aix,! fifteen miles from the Mediterranean; and 648 feet above its level.

-Large masses of sea shells have been found on the surface of plains in several parts of Asia;-and groups of tall trees under the great basin near Calcutta. At Dum-Dum not only trunks of trees, but the bones and horns of deer2 in a soil of great depth. Fossil bones of deer have been discovered, also, in a deep bed of gravel on the Kylas mountain, one of the Himalaya range:-16,000 feet above the sea.

In the region between Rochester and Chester,3 in the United States of America, are several organic remains, indicating the former dominion of the ocean: on the Missouri* back-bones of a fish, forty-five feet long, petrified: and bones of the mammoth in soil not above six inches deep, at Goshen, Orange Country, sixty miles from New York. From the anatomy of these bones, the animal, to which they belonged, seems to have been larger than the elephant:-it has, therefore, been called the great mastodonton. Among

1 Muirhead's Trav. p. 352.

2 Asiatic Journal, vol.'ii. p. 57.

3 For particulars see Dr. Mitchell's letter to Dr. Clinton, May 27, 1817. 4. Gass's Travels through the Interior of North America to the Pacific, 8vo. p. 52.

the rocks between the Zand and the Orange river, north-west of the Cape in Africa, petrifactions of shells are seen; some of which lie in situations one hundred and fifty' feet above the level of the sea.2 And as a still further corroboration of some vast change, it may be remarked, that in many places, where pebble strata have been examined, some have been found broken, whose pieces lie very near each other. A circumstance, which proves to demonstration, that at some distant time, they have suffered a violence, which broke them into pieces; and in the very places, too, where they have been found.

IV.

At the foot of Glyder Vawr, on the banks of Llyn Peris, are large fragments of stones, in which marine

Paterson's Travels in Africa, 4to. p. 110.

2 It is curious that Linnæus, having a knowledge of these circumstances, should assert, that he perceived many vestiges of a former world, but none of a deluge !-But Cuvier,-the Newton of this science,—says, "I am of opinion with M. Deluc and M. Dolomieu, that if there is any circumstance thoroughly established in geology, it is, that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch of which cannot be dated much farther back than five or 6000 years ago ;— that this revolution had buried all the countries which were before inhabited by men, and by the other animals that are now best known ;-that the same revolution had laid dry the bed of the last ocean, which now forms all the countries, at present inhabited ;—that the small number of individuals of men and other animals, that escaped from the effects of that great revolution, have since propagated and spread over the lands then newly laid dry; and that the countries, which are now inhabited, and which were laid dry by this 'last revolution, had been formerly inhabited at a more remote era, if not by man, at least by land animals.