GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF ORGANIC REMAINS.

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The lowest of these beds are characterised by remains of the simplest forms of animals, to which, in the living state, the name polyparies is given; formerly zoophytes from a mistaken notion of their participating also in the nature of plants. To this family belong Madreporites, Encrinites, Corals, Alcyonites, &c.* In the next strata, molluscous exuviæ occur; animals still of a very simple structure; of which the earliest specimens are Orthoceratites, Ammonites, &c. These have now no analogues among living beings. Rising among the secondary planes, we find in our coal strata, plants of species unknown to these climates, enormous reeds, bamboos, ferns, &c. The calcareous strata which succeed the coal, contain shells in great profusion, though still of kinds different from those found in our actual seas. They are termed numismalites, belemnites, gryphites, terebratulites, &c. Bones of fishes, and oviparous amphibia, such as crocodiles, turtles, and some reptiles, begin to appear a little further up, but sparingly scattered among the shells, with which the rocks now teem, and frequently to such a degree, as to compose nearly the whole of their substance. Among the superior calcar

"Palestine appears to be composed principally of secondary limestone, intermingled with trap-rocks. Thus the country between Jerusalem and Jaffa is compact limestone: the hill on which Nazareth is built is of a gray-coloured compact limestone; the field of blood, mentioned by St. Matthew, is of friable limestone; David's cave (1 Samuel, xxiv.) appears also to be situated in limestone; the mount of Olives is of limestone, in part granular; limestone occurs in the valley of Jehoshaphat; the rocks around the pool of Siloah are of limestone; on Mount Zion the rocks are of a conchoidal grayish siliceous limestone; Mount Lebanon appears principally composed of limestone; Mount Carmel is interesting, on account of the large balls of quartz contained in the limestone; all the rocks in fine around Jerusalem are of compact limestone, in which also the numerous tombs in the neighbourhood are hewn. Mount Tabor, Bethel, Capernaum, seem to be also calcareous."-Silliman's American Journal, June, 1825.

See a great variety of these beautifully figured in the second volume of Parkinson's Organic Remains.

eous and marly strata, the testaceous remains, resemble more nearly the genera of living animals. We here observe also bones of lamantines, whales, and other cetaceous fishes, along with a few vestiges of birds. In the superior and more recent beds, bones of land animals occur; but different from our existing genera; such are the Palæotheria, Anoplotheria, Pterodactyles, &c. Last of all, in the superficial layers of loam and gravel, which cover almost every land, animals near akin to living beings, though still specifically distinguishable in some respects, lie buried. Here the bones of the fossil elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c. have been exhumed.*

We can now perceive what precision, geology may derive from the circumstance, that at two remote points in the plane or order of the same mineral formation, we may expect to meet the same general family of marine shells. "Thus," says Mr. Conybeare in his excellent introduction to the Geology of England and Wales, " If we examine a collection of fossils from the chalk of Flamborough Head, Dover Cliff, Paris, or Poland, 8 species out of every 9 will be the same. We shall observe the same echinites associated with the same shells; nearly one-half of which echinites will be found to belong to divisions of that animal tribe, unknown in a recent state, and indeed never met with except in beds of chalk. If we next proceed to inspect parcels of fossils from the carboniferous limestone, from whichever locality it may be brought, we shall find them the same in kind; the same corals, the same encrinites, the same product terebratulæ, spiriferæ, &c. But between the organic remains of the chalk and mountain (carboniferous) lime, not one of the same animal species will be found, hardly any thing possessing resemblance."

These facts seem to indicate that as each peculiar soil, exposure, and elevation, on the surface of the earth, bears

• D'Aubuisson and Cuvier.

VAST EXTENT OF CONCHIFEROUS FORMATIONS.

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its peculiar families of plants, so each peculiar mineral bed deposited on the floor of that primeval ocean, has bred its peculiar tribes of animals. The texture of our shell limestones or marbles, would lead us moreover to conclude, that in these ancient seas, a nidus of calcareous paste has been plentifully diffused, in which were tenderly imbedded, the most delicate shells elaborated from it in countless myriads.

That conchiferous strata, occupy a large portion of the surface of the earth, has been generally known for ages; even Ovid tells us that we inhabit sea-born lands, (factas ex æquore terras.) Accurate accounts and figures of corals and shells were published in the year 1714, by the learned Buttner, who removed every rational doubt respecting the origin of these bodies, and rendered it manifest that all these fossils had primarily been inhabitants of the ocean. Even prior to that period, Bernard Palissy, a Parisian, had proved that the fossil shells of our strata, were animal remains that had been deposited in the sea; and that the impressions of fishes, occasionally found on stones, were actual casts of these marine animals.

Yet Voltaire, supposing these shells to countenance the Mosaic narrative of the deluge, (though, in fact, they do not belong to that event, but to prior epochs of the world,) issued the following infidel rescript, from the Vatican of Ferney. It is a good specimen of the philosophy of the sect, and may help us to judge into what panics the truths of revelation are ever ready to throw the herd, when the leader is obliged to weave such a veil of sophistry and falsehood, in order to hide a mere phantom from their view.

"There are some errors," says Voltaire," which are only for the people, there are others only for philosophers. Perhaps one of the latter kind is the notion entertained by many naturalists, that they perceive, all over the earth, evidences of a general bouleversement (subversion). There has been found in the mountains of Hessia, a stone which seemed to bear the impression of a turbot, and on the Alps

a petrified pike; and it has thence been concluded, that the sea and the rivers have flowed time about over the mountains. It was more natural to suppose that these fishes were carried thither by a traveller, who, on their getting spoiled, threw them away; and they became petrified in process of time. But this idea was too simple and too

little systematic.

"There have been also seen in some provinces of Italy, France, &c. small shells, which are asserted to be natives. of the sea of Syria. I do not mean to contest their origin, but ought we not to call to mind that innumerable crowd of pilgrims, and crusaders, who carried silver to the Holy Land, and brought back shells? And would people rather believe that the sea of Joppa and Sidon, came to cover Burgundy and the Milanese? No system can give the least probability to the idea, so generally diffused, of the ocean having rested a long time over the now habitable earth, and of men having formerly lived where porpoises and whales at present roam. Nothing in vegetable or animal life has changed; all the species have continued invariably the same.

"Some persons discovered, or thought they discovered, a few years ago, the bones of a rein deer, and of a hippopotamus, near Etampes, and thence concluded that the Nile and Lapland had been anciently on a pilgrimage to Paris. But they should rather have supposed that some virtuoso had possessed formerly in his cabinet, skeletons of the rein deer and hippopotamus. A hundred similar examples invite us to examine a long time, before we believe."*

⚫ I have translated the first paragraph from his Dissertation in 1749, on the changes which have happened to our globe, and the second from his singularities of Nature, published in 1768.

Voltaire's lust of fame, and pride of literature, led him to make a public display, without compunction or reserve, of every spectre of philosophy that haunted his restless brain. In 1738, he published Elements of the Newtonian Philosophy, without understanding, or being able to solve, a single problem of the Principia. He competed in the same year for a prize from the Academy of Sciences, by an elaborate dissertation

CUVIER'S DISCOVERIES IN FOSSIL ZOOLOGY.

On so absurd a text, any comment is superfluous.

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The monuments of changes in the constitution of animal and vegetable beings, and of an universal deluge which was fatal to them both, are so marvellous and multiform, that Baron Cuvier, by their means, has had the talent to create as lively an interest for the ancient empire of the dead, as for the kingdoms of living nature. In accompanying him through the dark cemeteries of the earth, a mysterious gleam from the primeval world penetrates our soul, and solemnly awakens its deepest faculties. We seem to walk among new orders of beings, endowed with extraordinary forms, and exercising paradoxical functions. In one sepulchre we meet with a sloth, not dwarfish as a small dog, like our existing species, but of the gigantic stature of a rhinoceros, provided with enormous arms and claws for suspending itself, according to the instincts of its kind, from trees of colossal growth. In others, we find quadrupeds bearing wings on their toes, crocodiles furnished with fins, but no feet, and lizards of whale-like dimensions. These all speak of a world unlike our own, the fashion of which has long passed away. But that world, the victim of sin, will not have perished in vain, if its mighty ruins serve to rouse its living observers from their slumberous

on Fire, though all unversed in experimental physics. In 1741, he addressed to the same learned body, a Memoir on Living Forces, a controverted problem in Dynamics, while he was unskilled in mechanical science. His Dissertation on the Changes that have happened to our Globe, appeared in 1749; a work equally remarkable for its ignorance of every branch of Natural History, and presumptuous dogmatism. And finally his Singularities of Nature came forth in 1768. Here his hatred to Moses has hurried him into a violation of many scientific truths, which it was shameful for him, at that period of discovery, not to know, or knowing to gainsay. The profligate hypocrisy of the French noblesse and churchmen under the Regent and Louis XV. tended to produce in minds gifted like Voltaire's, reaction against a Christianity so corrupt and heartless. Thus superstition becomes the parent of infidelity, a result equally exemplified in much of modern Europe, as it was in ancient Greece.