ch
astonishes the imagination, far from depending on any extraordinary
commotion of the globe, seems, on the contrary, to be only the result of
time, of an order of things now existing, and especially that of slow
changes" (i, pp. 116, 117).

The proofs he brings forward are the horizontality of the beds, both of
coal and deposits between them, the marine shells in the sandstones, the
fossil fishes intermingled with the plant remains in the shales;
moreover, some of the coal deposits are covered by beds of limestone
containing marine shells which lived in the sea at a very great depth.
The alternation of these beds, the great mass of vegetable matter which
lived at small distances from the soil which conceals them, and the
occurrence of these beds so high up, show that at this time Europe was
almost wholly covered by the sea, the summits of the Alps and the
Pyrenees being then, as he says, so many small islands in the midst of
the ocean. He also intimates that the climate when these ferns ("bamboo"
and "banana") lived was warmer than that of Europe at present.

In this essay, then, we see a great advance in correctness of geological
observation and reasoning over any previous writers, while its
suggestions were appreciated and adopted by Lamarck.

[79] Hooke had previously, in order to explain the presence of tropical
fossil shells in England, indulged in a variety of speculations
concerning changes in the position of the axis of the earth's rotation,
"a shifting of the earth's centre of gravity analogous to the
revolutions of the magnetic pole, etc." (Lyell's _Principles_). See also
p. 132.

[80] Cuvier, in a footnote to his _Discours_ (sixth edition, p. 49), in
referring to this view, states that it originated with Rodig (_La
Physique_, p. 106, Leipzig, 1801) and De Maillet (_Telliamed_, tome ii.,
p. 169), "also an infinity of new German works." He adds: "M. de Lamarck
has recently expanded this system in France at great length in his
_Hydrogeologie_ and in his _Philosophie zoologique_." Is the Rodig
referred to Ih. Chr. Rodig, author of _Beitraege zur Naturwissenschaft_
(Leipzig, 1803. 8^o)? We have been unable to discover this view in De
Maillet; Cuvier's reference to p. 169 is certainly incorrect, as quite a
different subject is there discussed.

CHAPTER IX

LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF INVERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY

It was fortunate for palaeontology that the two greatest zooelogists of
the end of the eigh