nges, much information of historical
interest will remain inscribed, and endure for periods as indefinite as
have the delicate markings of zoophytes or lapidified plants in some of
the ancient secondary rocks. In almost every large ship, moreover, there
are some precious stones set in seals, and other articles of use and
ornament composed of the hardest substances in nature, on which letters
and various images are carved--engravings which they may retain when
included in subaqueous strata, as long as a crystal preserves its
natural form.

It was, therefore, a splendid boast, that the deeds of the English
chivalry at Agincourt made Henry's chronicle

----as rich with praise
As is the ooze and bottom of the deep
With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries

for it is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and
industry of man will, in the course of ages, be collected together in
the bed of the ocean, than will exist at any one time on the surface of
the continents.

If our species be of as recent a date as is generally supposed, it will
be vain to seek for the remains of man and the works of his hands
imbedded in submarine strata, except in those regions where violent
earthquakes are frequent, and the alterations of relative level so
great, that the bed of the sea may have been converted into land within
the historical era. We need not despair, however, of the discovery of
such monuments, when those regions which have been peopled by man from
the earliest ages, and which are at the same time the principal theatres
of volcanic action, shall be examined by the joint skill of the
antiquary and geologist.

_Power of human remains to resist decay._--There can be no doubt that
human remains are as capable of resisting decay as are the harder parts
of the inferior animals; and I have already cited the remark of Cuvier,
that "in ancient fields of battle the bones of men have suffered as
little decomposition as those of horses which were buried in the same
grave." (See above, p. 147.) In the delta of the Ganges bones of men
have been found in digging a well at the depth of ninety feet;[1084] but
as that river frequently shifts its course and fills up its ancient
channels, we are not called upon to suppose that these bodies are of
extremely high antiquity, or that they were buried when that part of the
surrounding delta where they occur was first gained from the sea.

_Fossil skeletons