BOOK XII. Bitumi nated wood. Shells. were foreign to our climates. There was recognized there, in particular, the fruit of a nyctantes, the polypodium, and the adantium.* In a marly fossil schist, covered over by the lava, Faujas Saint-Fond met with the impressions of gossypium, in the state of a tree, the liquidambar-styrax, the cassia-fistula, and other vegetables of tropical climates. This same observer discovered the fruits of the palmieraréca in a deposit of decomposed fossil wood, named “terre d'ombre," near Cologne.t The German, Scheuchzer, who has given an antediluvien herbarium, Woodward and Lloyd, and many other philosophers, have proved the same circumstances as to the fossil plants of their country. Delamétherie has shewn, that the elastic fossil gum of Derbyshire was the cahoutchouc, which grows only in Peru. And the amber of Prussia is supposed to have been produced from the gum trees in the forests. Bituminated wood, although buried at great depths, may be the production of some less ancient and less violent revolutions. Pieces of wood have been found, of which one end was in a natural state, and the other bituminated. And it is remarkable that this wood is often of an indigenous kind. At Upsal is preserved a large piece of an alder tree, which was discovered in Scania converted into jet, having still the bark and buds very discernible. Thus bituminated woods approach by degrees to the nature of subterraneous forests, or heaps of wood, which have been simply buried by some modern convulsion. Amongst the remains of the animal kingdom, shells and zoophytes are the most abundant; they occupy immense spaces, but are principally found in the calcareous rocks. France furnishes us with the best known examples. The environs of Paris alone have supplied M. Lamarck Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences, 1718. † Delamétherie, Théorie de la Terre, ◊ 1452. Lehmann, cité par Bergmann, Géog. Phys. i. 306. with more than 60 species, and this philosophical classification has not nearly reached its limits. We know that a vast bed of chalk, accompanied by banks of calcareous shell, extends from Rethel, through the departments of the Marne and the Aube, towards Sens. The quantity of extraneous bodies which have been found in this belt of chalk, or in its vicinity, is very considerable. "In the environs of the town of Rheims, are found quarries filled with transparent belemnites, with sea urchins, echini, and with pyrites of different forms. There likewise are to be seen in mingled confusion, cornua ammonis, fossil talc, petrified wood, and pieces of potter's earth full of impressions of leaves." From Chalons to Rheims, the soil is mixed with chalk, and contains belemnites, pectines, echini, the teeth of fishes, and the broken points of echini. The canton of Courtagnon presents a bank of shells of several myriametres in length, and nearly two in breadth. It contains a quantity of fossils preserved entire, and some have even retained their colour and their polish. "More than sixty kinds are to be seen, such as purple oysters, pectinites, chamas, tellines, mytilus, cardium, cypræa, cornua ammonis nerites, sabotes, lepas, patella, archa, squalus maximus, and other animals, and also fossil corals.+ Below the town of Montmirail, between the farm of Tigecourt, and a hamlet called Le Faussat, at the confluence of the rivulet of Saint-Martin with the river called the Petit Morni, there is a very extensive bank of sand filled with fossil shells of every kind. This bank is five metres in height, and is covered with sixty-five centimetres of vegetable earth; below the bank of shells is another of yellow and grey sand, which is almost horizontal and parallel to the declivity of the soil. The quarries of Epernay, and of Dizy, along the Marne, furnish nearly the same * Bruslé, Statistique du Département de l'Aube, p. 6. + Description du Département de la Marne, par la Société d'Agriculture et des Sciences du Département, p. 46, et suiv. Coquebert-Monbret, Journal des Mines, No. 94, p. 316. XII. XII. BOOK fossils, as well as petrified wood, which resembles the true chesnut tree. In the cabinet of natural history at Chalons, a shark's tooth is preserved incrusted in chalk, and a petrified echinus, found at the depth of twenty-seven metres. All the plains of what was formerly called the Isle of France, present vast banks of calcareous and sandy stones, filled with, or rather composed of shells, some belonging to the kinds which inhabit our seas, others similar to those which exist in fresh waters, a circumstance which proves a difference both in their age and their origin.* France still farther supplies an example of one enormous bed covered with no other substance than shells. I allude Touraine. to the neighbourhood of Touraine, which is one continuous bed of broken shells, of about nine ancient square leagues in superficial extent, and at least 20 feet in thickness. The whole mass of shells is estimated at 170 millions of cubic toises.t Remarks upon the shells in The other countries of Europe are not less abundant in fossil shells. Twenty pages would be insufficient to enuGermany. merate the places of Germany where they are found; but there is one general remark of the German philosophers which is highly deserving of attention. The calcareous rocks of transition, and the schists of the same formation, in the chain of Hartz, contain only zoophytes, such as the madrepores, millepores, and terebratulites; the stratified rocks, considered as the most ancient, contain also zoophytes, belemnites, ammonites, encrinites, pentacrinites, in a word, shells the most remote from the actually existing kinds. On the contrary, the most modern calcareous rocks, those of Mount Bolca, near Verona, and the hills of chalk in England, and Zealand, inclose kinds approaching to those which now exist, such as the ostracites, pectinites, buccinites, nautilites, chamites, and others. * Cuvier et Brongniard, Géographie-Physique des Environs de Paris. Annales du Muséum, xi. 293. + Reaumur, Mémoires de l'Acad. des Sciences, en 1720, p. 404. Freisleben, Observations sur le Hartz, ii. 81. Steffens, Beytræge zur Innern, etc. p. 87. XII. The north and south of Europe do not yield to the central BOOK parts in this respect. The calcareous rocks of Ratwick, in Sweden, at 3000 feet above the sea; the vegetable earth of Finland, and the argillaceous beds of the islands of Norway, the north abound in shells, some whole, others almost changed into and south earth.* In Italy, we see near Bologna a bed of sand formed of cornua animonis, which are not one line in thickness. In Greece and in Spain we often travel over nothing but shells. Ramond has found them in the Pyrenees, upon the summit of Mount Perdu, at the height of 10,578 feet; Lamanon, in the Dauphinese Alps, at 7,446 feet; Guerin, upon Mount Ventoux, at 6,162 feet; and Saussure, in the Alps of Savoy, at 6,104 feet; it may be affirmed, almost with certainty, that throughout Europe, wherever there is chalk, there also are shells.‡ Shells of of Europe. Asia and Every thing concurs in leading us to consider the other Shells of parts of the world as perfectly similar to Europe with re- Africa. spect to the abundance of shells. The vast heaps of echini which exist in Lybia, and in Barbary, have been described by Shaw; and we know from Romer, that they are found in the gold mines of Akim in Guinea. Mount Libanus is in a manner sown with echini, and Mount Carmel with petrified oysters. In the chains which border the Caspian Sea, shells are found even at a height above the region of the clouds.** We see beds of them interposed amongst the rocks of Mount Taurus in Caramania.tt The mountains of China, according to the Jesuits, tt are covered with them; * Bergmann, Géograph. Physique, i. 287. Linné, Pontopp. Dan. &c. + Comment. Bononienses, p. 66. Faujas Saint-Fond, Essai de Géologie, ii. 61, 66. Romer, Voyage, &c. p. 20. (in German.) || Paul Lucas, Voyage, ii. 380. Corn. le Bruyn, Voyages au Lévant, ch. 59. ** Kampfer, Amenitat, Exot. 430. ++ Figueroo, Ambassadeur Espagnol, cité par Leibnitz, Protogea, § 23. + D'Incarville, Philosoph. Transact. vol. xlviii. BOOK and Siberia has offered to the Russian travellers not only calcined, but pyritized shells, and also madrepores.* XII. The philosophical traveller Peron has seen the coasts of Timor, New Holland, and a great many other oceanic lands, composed in a great measure of accumulations of marine testaceous animals. With regard to America, we learn from Kalm, that the United States and Canada contain enormous Shells upon beds of calcareous matter. We see Admiral Narborough leras. seeking in vain, in the bay of St. Julian, for oysters analogous to the shells of which he found the neighbouring mountains composed; and, lastly, in the centre of that hemisphere, M. de Humboldt points out to us the high chain of the Andes covered over with ostracites (petrified oyster shells) at an elevation of 13,200 feet. the Cordil Fossil fishes. Fossil fish of Nan terre. The remains of other sea animals are less abundant;† next to the testaceous kinds, fishes are the most frequent. They are found in Switzerland, near Glarus, in the slaty schists; in Germany, in marly schist, and in the bituminous schist of Pappenheim; in the coppery schist of Eisleben; in the stinking schist of Ochningen; in Egypt and in Syria; in the calcareous rocks upon the coast of Coromandel, and in several mountains of China. The place which has furnished the greatest number, is Mount Bolca, near Verona in Italy. France has furnished some very curious specimens ; there has been discovered at Grandmont, at four leagues from Beaune, in Burgundy, a fish in a mass of grey calcareous hard stone. Another, which was 10 inches 10 lines long, has also been found in a solid bed of stone, at 17 feet depth, at Nanterre, near Paris. These are the only two examples of this kind; the other fossil fish hitherto discovered, not being incrusted in the mass of the stone, but in the more recent layers. The fish * Georgi, Description de la Russie, iii. 599, &c. &c. + Humboldt, Tableau des Régions Equinoxiales, p. 126, 127. Scheuchzer, Piscium Querelæ et Vindicæ, Zurich, 1708. Knorr, Lapides Diluvii Testes. Nuremberg, 1749. Tab. 17, 18. Gessner, de Petrificatis, cap. 27, p. 60, édit. de 1759. |