ese clay pebbles, if I may use the expression, ny had soon acquired a sort of metallic hue, ficient to enable the eye, after some practice, single them out at a little distance amidst the avel. On examination they were found to be holly covered with a coating of a new and hard bstance of a uniform structure, in some cases rely thicker than a mere film, in others as thick a shilling, in others as an eighth or a quarter an inch, or even much more. In those of rent formation the white nucleus of clay was et moist and soft; in the others, dry, but somemes detached from the crust, and, when shaen, rattling within it like the contracted kernel

a nut within the shell, or the chrysalis of a lk-worm within its coccoon; in those of older ate, perfectly hard, and

vitriolic acid, in the form of gas, which held them in solution, and floated with them in the atmosphere, until the attractive clay pebble offered, as they passed over it, a suitable nidus for deposition. At low water I also observed, far from the cliffs, vast blocks of dark stone; of which some, having been broken by collision, discovered, by the light colour of a definite central part, that they had been originally formed round a large lump of clay*.

* It may well be doubted whether the stones, which have fallen from the air in different parts of the world, have not been suddenly formed, like hail-stones, in the upper regions of the atmosphere, by the union and accretion of ingredients sublimed and floating in the state of gases. Whatever be the difficulties of this hypothesis, they seem less formidable than those which attend the supposition of the stones being projected from a terrestrial or a lunar volcano. The want of discovery of such stones in the vicinity of any volcano; their total dissimilarity to lava, pumice, or any other volcanic production; the absence of all indications of their having been under the action of fire; the great distance of any earthly volcano whence they could have been thrown, as to the Wolds of Yorkshire, or to the middle of France; the immensity of the requisite force of projection from the moon

The account of the creation given in the first chapter of Genesis, though it may not negative the possibility that the chaotic mixture of terrene and aqueous particles might be derived from the dissolution of an antecedent globe, seems to contain nothing to favour such a theory. The phraseology of the first verse, the subsequent recital of the production of light, of the separation of the earthy from the fluid atoms into their respective collections, of the progressive formation of herbs and trees, of fishes, of birds, of beasts, of man; rarely I think, would convey to the mind of a reader unprepossessed by system any other idea than that of a primary creation of the whole.

But, farther, the hypothesis, if it could be verified, would fail to invalidate our general argument. For, in the first place, the universal dislocations and convulsions which it has been incontrovertibly shown that the exterior strata of the present earth have undergone, must necessa

to carry them, even if the orifice of the lunar volcano happened at the moment to point towards the earth, beyond the sphere of the moon's attraction into the predominance of that of the earth: these facts seem to furnish insupe-. rable arguments against a volcanic origin of the stones.

rily have destroyed the animated beings on its surface, any portion excepted which might be preserved by a miraculous interposition. Secondly, if there were a prior world, the existing organic remains must be divided between the ruins of that world and the present earth. And the smallest proportion of them which could in reason be allotted to the present earth would abund. antly confirm the destruction already stated.— Thirdly, many of them will be found to be in their nature and circumstances such as could not be ascribed otherwise than to the present earth, without the grossest violation of every principle of probability.

We proceed, then, to the actual phenomena. Evidence shall again be, in the first instance, adduced from our own island.

In the limestone rocks of Dovedale, near the centre of the kingdom, and in the calcareous region which constitutes so large a portion of the district denominated the Peak, marine shells are continually found incorporated. The gray Derbyshire marble is an entire mass of marine productions.

"In the alluvial gravel below Newton (near

41

Bath), not far from the river, several tusks, supposed to be of the mammoth, possibly of the elephant, have been discovered." One of them measured six feet in length. "At Brentford, near London, two teeth of the hippopotamus, and the entire tusk of an elephant, nine feet long, with other bones of the same animal, and several nautili, were dug up at the depth of thirty feet*."

The head, three feet long, of an alligator, as is supposed, the jaws of which contain one hundred and twenty teeth, and the vertebræ of the back to the length of six additional feet, besides six joints of the tail, were extricated from a quarry near Bath. Similar jaws abound at Charmouth. An alligator has also been found in black marble in Derbyshiret; and in the alum rock near Whitbyt.

"The coral bed" (in a stratum of limestone between Midford and South Stoke)" contains the madrepora cinerascens, which is found recent in

* Townsend, p. 229.

Townsend, p. 275, 276.

Phil. Trans. abridged, vol. xi. p. 259. 289.