stance, they would not have been rolled and triturated, but would have been protected against trituration; this character, therefore, is no proof whatever against transport. 2. "They have not been collected "together in entire skeletons, but are scattered and "broken; therefore they have not been transported." Wherever those animals died, they must have died with their entire skeletons; and, if parts only of those skeletons are found, the other parts must have mouldered away. M. Cuvier's statement, is much too equivocal and systematic, to yield the conclusion which he wishes to establish by it. In the case of the American mastodon exhibited in London a few years ago, most parts of the skeleton were found lying in the same place; but some parts had mouldered and perished." "At

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Tonna, in Thuringia, the entire skeleton of an elephant was found at the depth of fifty feet, in "calcareous tufa, and in the midst of fossils of "all kinds'," whilst in Franconia, and recently in Yorkshire, vast quantities of the fractured bones of elephants, rhinoceri, hyænas, &c. have been discovered lying mixedly and confusedly to

'D'AUBUISSON, tom. ii. p. 505. "A Tonna, en Thuringe, on a "trouvé dans le tuf calcaire, au milieu des fossiles de toute espèce, et à une profondeur de cinquante pieds, un squelette entier d'éléphant.— "Le tuf de la Thuringe repose tantôt sur des galets, tantôt sur des "roches qui constituent les formations de ce pays : il y fait des assises qui "ont, en quelques endroits, plus de cinquante pieds d'épaisseur, et "qui sont composées de strates de tuf compacte et de tuf friable ou "caverneux."-Ibid. p. 472.

gether'. The rhinoceros found in the banks of the Vilhoui, and the elephant discovered near the mouth of the Lena, which Cuvier particularly notices, had their entire skeletons; the latter had, moreover, all its flesh and hide, being preserved by the polar ice into which it was incorporated. The mere circumstance, that only parts of skeletons are usually found, can prove nothing against the original transport of entire skeletons: every churchyard proves this fact by presenting the same phenomenon, of the partial preservation of bones; and yet, we are quite certain, that entire skeletons were originally transported thither, and there deposited. But, let us consider the difference of the two explications, with relation to the ulterior inferences which they require. Both suppose a preternatural action of the sea, but, in the case of transport, nothing need be altered in the established constitution of the globe; whereas, in the other case, we must proceed to speculate further, how animals of the torrid zone could have lived in a northern latitude; and we must invent an hypothesis, and assume a revolution, in order to assign a cause. The simplicity of the former solution, is therefore philosophical evidence of its truth.

But it has happened, that the circumstances of position of these animal exuvia are very different; some are separately and deeply buried in close strata, whilst others are crowdedly congregated in

BUCKLAND, Reliquiæ Diluviana.

2 Theory, § 6.

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cavities of rocks. The mineral geology must therefore have different revolutions, to account for this diversity of position; not reflecting, that a difference of local circumstance or position, would have been a necessary consequence of one and the same revolution in different localities. "We must not confound (says De Luc), the phenomenon of remains of "terrestrial animals deposited in moveable strata', "with that of bones found in vast quantities in "caverns; the latter phenomenon differs essentially "from the former"." To explain which essential difference," he poetically propounds; that, in the first case," the animals, in attempting to save "themselves by swimming à la nage from "islands which sunk beneath them, were ingulfed by the sea, and were immersed in the soils "of its ancient bed, in which we now find them3:" whereas, in the latter case, the animals occupied their habitations in perfect security, to a good old age; and "the caverns were -comme des cimetières "-sorts of burying-places, into which the animals, "when sick, retired to die; which, (he says,)

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11

can alone account for the prodigious quantity of "bones heaped together and incrusted with stalactites*."

These congregated and mingled masses of

1 Lett. Geol. p. 216.

2 Ib.

p. 218.

Ib. p. 216.

4 Ib. p. 219. We possess no evidence from natural history, of this exequial instinct in the brute creation. De Luc asserts it universally, on the ground of the particular example which he alleges, of amphibious animals, and especially of sea-calves (veaux marins); which, when ill (he

fractured, yet untriturated bones of extinct and of existing animal genera in cavities of rocks, is the phenomenon which, above all others, has excited the interest, perplexed the sagacity, and stimulated the invention of the mineral geology: but, all" play of mind" for expounding that great phenomenon, is now concluded. The important and extensive means which have very recently been supplied, of investigating and comparing the characters and natures of the rocks in whose cavities those innumerable mingled fragments of tropical animals occur, have suddenly thrown open to us an entirely new and unexpected prospect of things; and conduct us, at once, to results of answering importance, confirmative both of the sufficiency of one revolution for producing all the diversified phenomena we have here considered, and confirmative also, of the general argument maintained in this work, by revealing to us the great and pregnant GEOLOGICAL FACT that all those rocks, whether in Hungary, Germany, France, or England, pertain to ONE and THE SAME class of rock, viz. LIMESTONE; a class, whose texture and composition bear unequivocal evidence, by the intimate and multitudinous incorporation into their substances of marine organic remains, that they were not indurated during that primitive period,

affirms), come upon some of the coasts of Scotland to die. But, although it should be true, that amphibious animals come out of the sea to die, yet, no analogical inference is thence afforded, that hyænas and bears go into caves to die.

but that they were at that time soft and plastic, constituting perhaps a moderately tenaceous, but certainly a very loose soil; and loading, in enormous continuous masses, the primitive bed of the ocean. "The hills in which these cavities are hollowed (pro"claims Cuvier) resemble each other by their com

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position; THEY ARE ALL OF LIMESTONE Les "collines où ces cavernes sont creusées se ressemblent

par leur composition; ELLES SONT TOUTES CAL"CAIRES'." I shall, now, endeavour to trace out the indications of this great GEOLOGICAL MONI

TORY.

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Limestone," says D'Aubuisson, "constitutes "the principal mass of secondary soils; and may "be considered as only one enormous calcareous bed forming, with but little interruption, the external coating (enveloppe) of the solid mass of the globe"." That the matter of that universal mass was fluid or plastic at the time when it received into its substance the shells and other marine bodies which are incorporated into it, and which often crowd it to excess so as even sometimes to form a shelly breccia, is as undeniable, as that the agent was fluid by which a rocky or an osseous breccia has become conglutinated; and, although we have now no experience of limestone in a plastic or loose state, and are acquainted with it only in its quality of solid and indurated rock, yet, those incorporated evidences establish the

1 Ossemens Fossiles, tom. iv. p. 303.

2 Traité de Géognosie, tom. i. p. 335.