rocks contains
remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and
animals. In those strata which are deepest, and which must consequently
be supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life
are rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the
bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; the
remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the
next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species, in a still more
recent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidated
strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian
formations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe are
found, with others belonging to extinct species. But in none of these
formations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the
remains of man or any of his works been discovered. It is, I think,
impossible to consider the organic remains found in any of the earlier
secondary strata, the lias-limestone and its congenerous formations for
instance, without being convinced that the beings, whose organs they
formed, belonged to an order of things entirely different from the
present. Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied to the palms of the
equatorial countries than to any other plants, can only be imagined to
have lived in a very high temperature; and the immense reptiles, the
megalosauri with paddles instead of legs and clothed in mail, in size
equal or even superior to the whale; and the great amphibia,
plethiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks longer
than their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables growing
in the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which low
lands or extensive shores rose above an immense calm sea, and when there
were no great mountain, chains to produce inequalities of temperature,
tempests, or storms. Were the surface of the earth now to be carried
down into the depths of the ocean, or were some great revolution of the
waters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated by
fire, covered with consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirely
different would it be in its characters from any of the secondary strata.
Its great features would undoubtedly be the works of man--hewn stones,
and statues of bronze and marble, and tools of iron--and human remains
would be more common than those of animals on the g