by naturalists secondary, and is composed of serpentine, lime-stone, and slate of every sort and texture. The third, or central chain, denominated primitive, contains granites, quartz, felt, spar, mica, and other primitive crystallizations. In the junction of the secondary with the primitive, and in the exterior coating of the primitive, are generally found metals. Marbles, on the contrary, are found towards the bases of the secondary. This distribution, indeed, is liable to exceptions. Granites are sometimes found very near to plains, as at St. Ambroise on the road to Turin; and calcareous substances, on the central chain, as the micaceous calcareous schistus, which composes the summit of Mount Cenis. The Appennines, which may be considered as a branch of the Alps, commence between Turin and Genoa, and are surrounded with hills of sand, grit, and other wrecks, in the same manner, but in less abundance, and in less volumes, than those of the Alps. These Apennines also, although in general they are calcareous, and consequently of the second class, are yet sometimes found to contain masses of granite. *

All this proves that the waters of the ocean once rested what are at present the highest O 2

upon

mountains.

De Saussure,

mountains. Nor need we go further to the deduction made from the enormous beds of fossil salt which are every where to be traced, and which are naturally conjectured to be nothing more than residuums from subsequent and gradual evaporation of the fluid in which they were dissolved. Linnæus says, "If we consider the fossil kingdoms, we shall see the manner in which water deposits clay; how it is crystallized into sand near the shore; how it wears down shells into chalk, dead plants into vegetable mould, and metals into ochie; from all which substances, according to the laws of nature, stones are formed; thus from sand originates grit; from mould, slate; from chalk, flint; from shells and earth, marbles; from clay, talc; and, from its constituent principles, beautiful and pellucid crystals." But we will not return to a subject, so fully and minutely dwelt upon in our former discussions. At the same time, it may not be amiss to take a glance at that part of the kingdom of fossils, which has more peculiarly eluded the researches of philosophers.

The bones of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the enormous mammouth, as it has been styled, have sometimes been found separate, sometimes in parcels, and sometimes in heca

tombs,

tombs, in Siberia ; but generally in beds of sand, near great rivers, and generally intermixed with the bones of cetaceous fishes, and of other marine animals. Nor does Siberia alone present this phænomenon. The same kinds of bones have been found along the Mississippi and the Ohio in America. They have been found in India and in China. They have also been found near the Tiber, the Arno, the Thames, the Vistula, the Rhine, the Danube, the Rhone, the Elb, the Weser, the Meuse, the Moselle, &c. † What are all these rivers but the remains of the most ancient channels, by which the waters ran from off the surface of the present earth? Much greater quantities of the substances, now denominated fossils, were no doubt dragged into the bosom of the ocean. As the volume of the fluid, however, decreased, so must the impetuosity of the current have diminished; and hence, as the stream became too feeble to transport them further, so they subsided on the sides or banks of the rivers where they are now discovered.

Great diversity of opinion, indeed, has subsisted relative to these fossil bones. The animals to which they belonged, have been supposed 0 3

by

by some to have been native of those climates. Others have conceived that curiosity, vanity, or the ancient modes of carrying on wars, might have been the cause why they were so generally disseminated. For instance, what numbers must have been employed by Hannibal, by Pyrrhus, by the Romans, and by others! But if such animals are supposed to have been temporary visitors, or to go farther, to be indigenous to the soils where they have been discovered, how is it to be accounted for, that other animals which are always equally indigenous of the same soils, should never have been discovered in the same soils, in a fossil state? The bones, the teeth, the skeletons of camels, of lions, tygers, dromedaries, &c. have never, that I know of, or at least, very rarely been discovered blended with those of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the whale, the grampus, and the mammouth. And Pallas says, all the armies of the cast could never have produced elephants sufficient to have afforded the fossils which have already been found in Siberia.

One familiar instance, however, and in a circumscribed spot, may lead us perhaps to a more satisfactory explanation of this matter, than can be obtained from merely dealing in generals. It

3

is

is a fact well known, that all through Tuscany, and through the territories of the Pope, fossil bones of old and of young elephants have been dug out of the bowels of the earth, and out of the sides of mountains. The Abbé Fortis has given the world an interesting account of the islands of Cherso and Osero, and of the fossils, which form one continued bed of marble through the hearts of these islands, and all along the shores of Dalmatia. The bones in the solid rock of Gibraltar have already been mentioned; which, by the way, you must not confound with the petrified bones found in the Cavês, and which are merely pervaded by a lapidescent matter which is constantly circulating in those caves, and which covers them with a stalagmatical or sparry coat of stone, or, as Kircher expresses it, cortice lapideo. The Abbé Fortis, however, in the progress of his enquiries conceived himself warranted in concluding, that the Mediterranean and the Gulph of Venice are both of them new scas. Joining issue with him, therefore, which I do most heartily, may we not be allowed to conjecture, that before the Atlantic rushed in to fill up the enormous chasms, caused in this medio terra, probably by subterraneous fire, that Africa and Europe possibly might have joined ? Is it any great stretch of speculative hardihood,