nfiltration of water and carrying in of
vegetable bodies, certainly cannot be admitted of; consequently, from
this description, there would seem to be strata of coal alternated with
the alpine schisti. But the formation of mineral coal requires vegetable
matter to have been deposited along with those earthy substances, at the
bottom of the sea. The production of vegetable bodies, again, requires
the constitution of sea and land, and the system of a living world,
sustaining plants at least, if not animals.

In this natural history of the alpine schisti, therefore, we have a
most interesting fact, an example which is extremely rare. Seldom are
calcareous organised bodies found among those alpine strata, but still
more rarely, I believe, are the marks of vegetable bodies having
contributed in the formation of those masses. But however rare this
example, it is equally decisive of the question, Whether the alpine
schisti have had a similar origin as the other strata of the globe,
in which are found abundance of animal and vegetable bodies, or their
relics? and we are authorised to say, that since those perfect alpine
strata of Dauphine have had that origin, all the alpine schisti of the
globe have been originally formed in a similar manner. But to put this
matter out of doubt:

In this summer 1788, coming from the Isle of Man, Mr Clerk and I
traveled through the alpine schistus country of Cumberland and
Westmoreland. We found a limestone quarry upon the banks of Windermere,
near the Low-wood Inn. I examined this limestone closely, but despaired
of finding any vestige of organised body. The strata of limestone
seem to graduate into the slate or schistus strata, between which the
calcareous are placed. Fortunately, however, I at last found a fragment
in which I thought to perceive the works of organised bodies in a
sparry state; I told Mr Clerk so, and our landlord Mr Wright, who had
accompanied us. I have brought home this specimen, which I have now
ground and polished; and now it is most evidently full of fragments of
entrochi. Mr Wright then told me he had seen evident impressions of
marine objects, as I understood from the description, in the slate of
those mountains; and he was to send me specimens so soon as he could
procure them.

Here is one specimen which at once overturns all the speculations formed
upon that negative proposition. The schistus mountains of Cumberland
were, in this respect, as perfect primitive mou