ispensable, and we must diligently
consider facts. The land is known, wherever we make excavations, to be
composed of different strata or soils placed one above the other, some
of sand, some of rock, some of chalk, others of marl, coal, pummice,
gypsum, lime, and the rest. These ingredients are sometimes pure, and
sometimes confusedly intermixed. Within are often imprisoned different
marine fishes, like dried mummies, and more frequently shells,
crustacea, corals, plants, &c., not only in Italy, but in France,
Germany, England, Africa, Asia, and America;--sometimes in the lowest,
sometimes in the loftiest beds of the earth, some upon the mountains,
some in deep mines, others near the sea, and others hundreds of miles
distant from it. Woodward conjectured that these marine bodies might be
found everywhere; but there are rocks in which none of them occur, as is
sufficiently attested by Vallisneri and Marsilli. The remains of fossil
animals consist chiefly of their more solid parts, and the most rocky
strata must have been soft when such exuviae were inclosed in them.
Vegetable productions are found in different states of maturity,
indicating that they were imbedded in different seasons. Elephants,
elks, and other terrestrial quadrupeds, have been found in England and
elsewhere, in superficial strata, never covered by the sea. Alternations
are rare, yet not without example, of marine strata, with those which
contain marshy and terrestrial productions. Marine animals are arranged
in the subterraneous beds with admirable order, in distinct groups,
oysters here, dentalia or corals there, &c., as now, according to
Marsilli,[77] on the shores of the Adriatic. We must abandon the
doctrine, once so popular, which denies that organized fossils were
derived from living beings, and we cannot account for their present
position by the ancient theory of Strabo, nor by that of Leibnitz, nor
by the universal deluge, as explained by Woodward and others; "nor is it
reasonable to call the Deity capriciously upon the stage, and to make
him work miracles for the sake of confirming our preconceived
hypothesis." --"I hold in utter abomination, most learned Academicians!
those systems which are built with their foundations in the air, and
cannot be propped up without a miracle; and I undertake, with the
assistance of Moro, to explain to you how these marine animals were
transported into the mountains by natural causes."[78]

A brief abstract the