within land we seek, we most commonly find a | about nine leagues long, and as many broad, number of fossil-shells, which being compared with others from the sea, of known kinds, are found to be exactly of a similar shape and nature. They are found at the very bottom of quarries and mines, in the retired and inmost parts of the most firm and solid rocks, upon the tops of even the highest hills and mountains, as well as in the valleys and plains; and this not in one country alone, but in all places where there is any digging for marble, chalk, or any other terrestrial matters, that are so compact as to fence off the external injuries of the air, and thus preserve these shells from decay. These marine substances, so commonly diffused, and so generally to be met with, were for a long time considered by philosophers as productions, not of the sea, but of the earth. "As we find that spars," said they, "always shoot into peculiar shapes, so these seeming snails, cockles, and mussel-shells, are only sportive forms that nature assumes amongst others of its mineral varieties: they have the shape of fish, indeed, but they have always been terrestrial animals."2 With this plausible solution mankind were for a long time content; but upon closer inquiry, they were obliged to alter their opinion. It was found that these shells had in every respect the properties of animal, and not of mineral nature. They were found exactly of the same weight with their fellow-shells upon shore. They answered all the chemical trials in the same manner as sea-shells do. Their parts, when dissolved, had the same appearance to view, the same smell and taste. They had the same effects in medicine, when inwardly administered; and, in a word, were so exactly conformable to marine bodies, that they had all the accidental concretions growing to them, (such as pearls, corals, and smaller shells,) which are found in shells just gathered on the shore. They were, therefore, from these considerations, given back to the sea; but the wonder was, how to account for their coming so far from their own natural element upon land.3 As this naturally gave rise to many conjectures, it is not to be wondered that some among them have been very extraordinary. An Italian, quoted by Mr. Buffon, supposes them to have been deposited in the earth at the time of the crusades, by the pilgrims who returned from Jerusalem; who gathering them upon the seashore, in their return carried them to their different places of habitation. But this conjecturer seems to have but a very inadequate idea of their numbers. At Touraine, in France, more than a hundred miles from the sea, there is a plain of whence the peasants of the country supply themselves with marl for manuring their lands. They seldom dig deeper than twenty feet; and the whole plain is composed of the same materials, which are shells of various kinds, without the smallest portion of earth between them. Here then is a large space, in which are deposited millions of tons of shells, that pilgrims could not have collected, though their whole employment had been nothing else. England is furnished with its beds, which, though not quite so extensive, yet are equally wonderful. "Near Read. ing, in Berkshire, for many succeeding generations, a continued body of oyster-shells has been found through the whole circumference of five or six acres of ground. The foundation of these shells is a hard rocky chalk; and above this chalk, the oyster-shells lie in a bed of green sand, upon a level, as nigh as can possibly be judged, and about two feet thickness." 4 These shells are in their natural state, but they were found also petrified, and almost in equal abundance,5 in all the Alpine rocks, in the Pyrenees, on the hills of France, England, and Flanders. Even in all quarries from whence marble is dug, if the rocks be split perpendicularly downwards, petrified shells and other marine substances will be plainly discerned. 4 Phil. Trans. vol. ii. p. 427. 5 Buffon, vol. i. p. 407. 6 At a spot within less than a mile from Tournus, a deposite of recent marine shells was discovered in 1844, enveloped in an unctuous clay of a greenish They were of two species, - the grey colour. ostrea hippopus (a variety of the oyster), and the murex trunculus (a shell with many spines),-both still living on the southern and western shores of France. Tournus is about fifty miles north from Lyons. The spot where they were found is near 175 metres, or 573 English feet, above the level of the Saone, 230 miles rom the Mediterranean, and the sea. The complete preservation of the oysters will not permit us to suppose that the shells have been carried to the place at any period less or more remote, and we are forced to conclude that they have been deposited by the sea, and of course that the land has been raised to the extent mentioned. We have evidence, therefore, that the soil of this part of France was covered by the sea when these The low lands extending shells were deposited. from the Cevennes to the western skirts of the Alps must then have formed a long narrow firth or inlet, shaped like the Forth, but five times as long, and broad in proportion. By a subsequent movement these lands have been raised about 600 feet. At what epoch this change took place we have no data to deterinine, but it was probably some thousand years anterior to historical records. We have analogous examples of recent marine shells found in Sweden and in Britain some hundred feet above the sea. With the evidence which the boulder clay furnishes of the sea having covered the land to a much greater height than this, the existence of the shells at the locality mentioned has nothing incredible in it. The more difficult fact to explain is, why the shells are found so rarely, since facts like this prove that they are capable of being preserved. The probability is, that it depends on the nature of the alluvial cover. Abridged from Scotsman newspaper "About a quarter of a mile from the river Medway, in the county of Kent, after the taking off the coping of a piece of ground there, the workmen came to a blue marble, which continued for three feet and a-half deep, or more, and then beneath appeared a hard floor or pavement, composed of petrified shells crowded closely together. This layer was about an inch deep, and several yards over; and it could be walked upon as upon a beach. These stones, of which it was composed, (the describer supposes them to have always been stones,) were either wreathed as snails, or bivalvular like cockles. The wreathed kinds were about the size of a hazel-nut, and were filled with a stony substance of the colour of marl; and they themselves also, till they were washed, were of the same colour; but when cleaned, they appeared of the colour of bezoar, and of the same polish. After boiling in water they became whitish, and left a chalkiness upon the fingers."7 In several parts of Asia and Africa, travellers have observed these shells in great abundance. In the mountains of Castravan, which lie above the city Barut, they quarry out a white stone, every part of which contains petrified fishes in great numbers, and of surprising diversity. They also seem to continue in such preservation, that their fins, scales, and all the minutest distinctions of their make, can be perfectly discerned.8 From all these instances we may conclude, that fossils are very numerous: and, indeed, independent of their situation, they afford no small entertainment to observe them as preserved in the cabinets of the curious. The varieties of their kinds are astonishing. Most of the seashells which are known, and many others to which we are entirely strangers, are to be seen either in their natural state, or in various degrees of petrifaction. In the place of some we have mere spar, or stone, exactly expressing all the lineaments of animals, as having been wholly formed from them. For it has happened, that the shells dissolving by very slow degrees, and the matter having nicely and exactly filled all the cavities within, this matter, after the shells have perished, has preserved exactly and regularly the whole print of their internal surface. Of these there are various kinds found in our pits; many of them resembling those of our own shores; and many others that are only to be found on the coasts of other countries. There are some shells resembling those that are never stranded upon our coasts; 10 but always remain in the deep:11 and many more there are which we can assimilate with no shells that are known amongst us. But we find not only shells in our pits, but also fishes and corals in great abundance; together with almost every sort of marine production. 7 Phil. Trans. p. 426. 8 Buffon, vol. i. p. 408. • Hill, p. 646. 10 Littorales. 11 Pelagii. It is extraordinary enough, however, that the common red coral, though so very frequent at sea, is scarcely seen in the fossil world; nor is there any account of its having ever been met with. But to compensate for this, there are all the kinds of the white coral now known, and many other kinds of that substance with which we are unacquainted. Of animals there are various parts: the vertebræ of whales, and the mouths of lesser fishes; these, with teeth also of various kinds, are found in the cabinets of the curious; where they receive long Greek names, which it is neither the intention nor the province of this work to enumerate. Indeed, few readers would think themselves much improved, should I proceed with enumerating the various classes of the Conicthyodontes, Polyleptoginglimi, or the Orthoceratites. These names, which mean no great matter when they are explained, may serve to guide in the furnishing a cabinet ; but they are of very little service in furnishing the page of instructive history. From all these instances we see in what abundance petrifactions are to be found; and, indeed, Mr. Buffon, to whose accounts we have added some, has not been sparing in the variety of his quotations, concerning the places where they are mostly to be found. However, I am surprised that he should have omitted the mention of one, which, in some measure, more than any of the rest, would have served to strengthen his theory. We are informed, by almost every traveller 12 that has described the pyramids of Egypt, that one of them is entirely built of a kind of freestone, in which these petrified shells are found in great abundance. This being the case, it may be conjectured, as we have accounts of these pyramids among the earliest records of mankind, and of their being built so long before the age of Herodotus, who lived but fifteen hundred years after the flood, that even the Egyptian priests could tell neither the time nor the cause of their erection; I say, it may be conjectured that they were erected but a short time after the flood. It is not very likely, therefore, that the marine substances found in one of them, had time to be formed into a part of the solid stone, either during the deluge, or immediately after it; and, consequently, their petrifaction must have been before that period. And this is the opinion Mr. Buffon has so strenuously endeavoured to maintain; having given specious reasons to prove, that such shells were laid in the beds where they are now found, not only before the deluge, but even antecedent to the formation of man, at the time the whole earth, as he supposes, was buried beneath a covering of waters. But while there are many reasons to persuade us that these extraneous fossils have been deposited by the sea, there is one fact that will abundantly serve to convince us, that the earth was 12 Hasselquist, Sandys. human species, were found, by Pallas and Cuvier, to St. habitable, if not inhabited, before these marine | seemed to prove the former existence of giants of the substances came to be thus deposited. For we find fossil-trees, which no doubt once grew upon the earth, as deep, and as much in the body of solid rocks, as these shells are found to be. Some of these fallen trees also have lain at least as long, if not longer, in the earth, than the shells, as they have been found sunk deep in a marly substance, composed of decayed shells and other marine productions. Mr. Buffon has proved that fossil-shells could not have been deposited in such quantities all at once by the flood; and I think, from the above instance, it is pretty plain, that, howsoever they were deposited, the earth was covered with trees before their deposition; and, consequently, that the sea could not have made a very permanent stay. How then shall we ac-known to be that of Pallas (slain by Turnus), and count for these extraordinary appearances in nature? A suspension of all assent is certainly the first, although the most mortifying conduct. For my own part, were I to offer a conjecture, and all that has been said upon this subject is but conjecture, instead of supposing them to be the remains of animals belonging to the sea, I would consider them rather as bred in the numerous fresh-water lakes, that in primeval times covered the face of uncultivated nature. Some of these shells we know to belong to fresh waters; some can be assimilated to none of the marine shells now known;13 why, therefore, may we not as well ascribe the production of all to fresh waters, where we do not find them as we do that of the latter to the sea only, where we never find them? We know that lakes, and lands also, have produced animals that are now no longer existing ; why, therefore, might not these fossil productions be among the number? I grant that this is making a very harsh supposition; but I cannot avoid thinking that it is not attended with so many embarrassments as some of the former, and that it is much easier to believe that these shells were bred in fresh water, than that the sea had for a long time covered the tops of the highest mountains.14 13 Hill's Fossils, p. 641. 14 See Supplementary Note B. NOTE A. "It is curious to observe," says a writer in the 18th volume of the Edinburgh Review,' "how different an impression the same natural appearances have made on the human mind in different states of its improvement. A phenomenon which, in one age, has excited the greatest terror, has, in another, been an object of calm and deliberate observation; and the things which have at one time led to the most extravagant fiction, have, at another, only served to define the boundaries of knowledge. The same comet which, from the age of Julius Cæsar, had three times spread terror and dismay through the nations of the earth, appeared a fourth time, in the age of Newton, to instruct mankind, and to exemplify the universality of the laws which that great interpreter of nature had discovered. The same fossil remains, which, to St. Augustine or Kircher, was higher than the walls of the city. The same author tells us, that another skeleton was found near hundred feet high, and who therefore could be no Palermo, that must have belonged to a man four other than one of the Cyclops, most probably Polyphemus himself. The same author has given the measures of several other colossal men, and exhibits them in an engraving adapted to a scale, and placed in order, from the common size up to that of the giant last mentioned. The belief in men of such enormous stature, no doubt arose from the appearance of bones of elephants, and other large animals found in the earth. When we consider, that the credulity and misinterpretation that are here so striking, are not the errors of the weak and illiterate, but of men of talents and learning-the best instructed by reading, conversation, and foreign travel, of any in the ages in which they lived, we cannot help being struck with the difference between the criterion of truth as received in those ages and in the present time. NOTE B.-Organic Remains. Mr. Kirwan remarks, that petrifications are most commonly found in strata or marl, chalk, limestone, or clay; seldom in sand-stone, still more rarely in gypsum, &c. They sometimes occur among ores, and almost always consist of the species of earth, stone, or other mineral, which immediately surrounds them. Those of shells are generally found nearest the surface of the earth, those of fish deeper, and those of wood deepest. A very remarkable circumstance is, that petrifactions are found in climates where their originals could not have existed. From the gradual and insensible concretion of this kind of matter from dropping waters, are found the large pendulous columns, hanging like icicles from the roofs and sides of caves. The most remarkable are in the Peak of Derbyshire. Sometimes they are found in the arches of old bridges, and arise from water oozing through, and carrying particles of lime with it. Petrifactions occur in three states; sometimes they are a little altered; sometimes they are converted into stone; and sometimes only the im pressions of them, or the moulds in which they have been enclosed, remain. Wood occurs in great abundance in many parts of England, buried at various depths under the surface, and very little altered either in its texture or properties. Pit-coal is supposed to be of vegetable origin. One circumstance confirms this opinion, namely, the existence of vast depositions of matter, half-way, as it were, between perfect wood and perfect pit-coal; betraying obvi ously its vegetable nature, and yet so rearly approximating to pit-coal in several respects, that it has been generally distinguished by the name of coal. at a greater or less depth, in a state of high preservation. All these trees, perfect in form, though broken by an irresistible force, are felled in the same direction, and always present their summits pointing towards the south. They are strewn on the ground on which they had grown, with the exception of the oaks, many of which appeared to have been torn up by the roots; yet the oak no longer grows under the high latitudes in which these forests are found. These lignites have been much confounded with others of obvious post diluvian lacustrine origin. Mosses, confervæ, and other equally delicate vegetable substances, preserved in agate and chalcedony, have been examined by Dr. MacCulloch, who is inclined to refer their origin to a period nearly coeval with the earliest existence of organic matter. Naturalists have often failed in their endeavours to identify the antediluvian plants with those now existing. They evidently flourished under a warm climate; but botanists hesitate to pronounce upon the species, or even the genera. In one instance, lately, a fossil plant has been determined with unusual precision. Under the name Trichomanes rotundatus, Mr. Lindley has described a yegetable, discovered within a nodule of argillaceous ironstone, which plant he does not hesitate to identify closely with one which is now only known to exist in the deep forests of New Zealand." No complete treatise on geological botany has subterraneous fossil forests not unfrequently occur, hitherto appeared in this country. Mr. Parkinson's first volume, it is true, is dedicated to the consideration of the vegetable kingdom. It contains descriptions and beautiful figures of many varieties of fossil wood, plants, flowers, seeds, and fruits, from various parts of Europe, and treats of the mineral and petrifying processes to which they have been subjected. But at the period this writer commenced his labours, no systematic classification or nomenclature had been formed, nor was it known that this class of fossils was so numerous. The great source whence our geologists have hitherto drawn their knowledge of antediluvian plants, is the splendid work, the Flora der Vorwelt' of Count Sternberg, In England the coal formations are particularly rich in beautifully preserved plants; and Mr. E. T. Artis, in his Antediluvian Phytology,' has drawn his illustrations from the fossil plarts peculiar to this formation. So far as they admit of comparison, they approach those tribes of plants which now exist in warm climates, and luxuriate in moist situations. They consist chiefly of palms and arborescent ferns, succulent plants, cacti, euphorbiæ, canes, reeds, and gramina, The trunks or stems thus discovered, belong principally to arundinaceous plants, approximating to those now known, partly to the palmaceous order, and partly to anomalous forms, constituting a transition between these and the coniferous plants. From the few comparisons which have been hitherto instituted between the "There is," says a writer in the Bombay Times,' plants of various distant coal-fields, there is reason "scarcely, perhaps, a spectacle on the surface of the to conclude that they have a general resemblance globe more remarkable, either in a geological or in all parts of the world; and if so, it contributes to picturesque point of view, than that presented by establish a fact, on which much speculation has been the petrified forest near Cairo. The traveller having employed, of the original uniformity of climate at passed the tombs of the caliphs, just beyond the those remote points on the earth's surface. In an gates of the city, proceeds to the southward nearly article in Silliman's Journal, it is said that fossil at right angles to the road, across the desert to Suez; plants which are now the natives of torrid climates, and, after having travelled some ten miles up a low have been found in considerable numbers in the barren valley covered with sand, grayel, and seastate of Ohio and in the vicinity of Ohio river. shells, fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday, Among these plants are the bread-fruit tree, the crosses a low range of sand-hills, which has for some species of the palm which produces the cocoa-nut, distance run parallel to his path. The scene now and the bamboo. The writer states that he has in presented to him is beyond conception singular and his possession the perfect impression of the cassia desolate. A mass of fragments of trees, all conand the tea-leaf found in the rocks of that region. verted into stone, and, when struck by his horse's The impressions of the bread-fruit tree show the hoof, ringing like cast-iron, is seen to extend itself flowers fully expanded and entire, and the author for miles and miles around him in the form of a deavers that his specimens of these fossil-plants are cayed and prostrate forest. The wood is of a dark so perfect and faithful to nature as to dispel all brown hue, but retains its form in perfection, the doubts of what they once were. The larger trees pieces being from 1 to 15 feet in length, and from are found mostly in sandstone. The supposition, half a foot to three feet in thickness, strewed so says the author, that these tropical plants were thickly together, as far as the eye can reach, that an carried northward by the ocean, is disproved by Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through the fact that some of the trees, or rather the roots amongst them, and so natural, that were it in Scotand parts of their trunks, stand upright evidently on land or Ireland, it might pass without remark for the spot where they grew, and others with every some enormous drained bog, on which the exhumed root entire, lie to appearance where they fell trees lay rotting in the sun. The roots and rudiwhen turned up by the roots. Again," asks the ments of the branches are, in many cases, nearly perwriter, "if floated from tropical regions, how hap- fect, and in some the wormholes eaten under the pens it that their flowers were uninjured? These bark are readily recognizable. The most delicate of show all their original beauty of form; they are fully the sap-vessels, and all the finer portions of the expanded, and could not have been transported from centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and bear to any considerable distance. Scarcely a day could have be examined with the strongest magnifiers. intervened between the period in which they were whole are so thoroughly silicified, as to scratch in full bloom and that in which, by that catastrophe glass, and to be capable of receiving the highest which long since overwhelmed our globe, they were polish." ' embalmed' in the spot where they are now found." Accumulations of trees, called "subterranean forests," may be traced at intervals, along our eastern coasts. Some of them, apparently, are the remains of forests which clothed the surface of our soil prior to the last great geological epoch. Most of the trees of this class, although broken off, overwhelmed by tremendous violence, and often flattened by the pressure of diluvial and alluvial deposits, appear to occupy their original sites; their stumps still remain rooted in the soil on which they evidently once dourished. In the north of Sweden, lignites or 66 The The following is Baron Schlotheim's classification of the antediluvian plants contained in his cabinet: His specimens are first divided into five sections or perhaps their more proper names would be orders. 1. DENDROLITHES, containing the remains of trees, which are subdivided into three subsections. A. Lithoxylites, of which no characters are given, but from the specimens mentioned by him, he evidently arranges in this place the wood-stone and wood-opal of the mineralogists. B. Lithantracites. In which the Baron places the bituminized stems, and other parts of trees. C. Bibliolithes. Fossil leaves, mostly of the latter formations. 2. BOTANOLITHES. Comprising those kinds of fossil plants which cannot be considered either as trees or shrubs, nor belonging to the plants of the old coal formation. formations, none now remain: 29 species of producta, 3 of pentamerus, and 19 of spirifer, inhabited the waters that produced the transition and mountain limestone, and contiguous shales; but these genera are altogether extinct. Indeed, almost the whole series of antediluvian multilocular shells seem to All the specimens belonging to the preceding have shared a similar fate. On the other hand, sections are merely enumerated, and not distin-instances are no less abundant and striking, where guished by generic and trivial names, as is the case with the following. the recent species comprehended under certain genera do greatly outnumber the fossils. Thus, under the 3. PHYTOTYPOLITHES. Fossil plants of the stone Linnæan genus conus are comprised 155 species existcoal formation. These the Baron divides systemati-ing; but only 3 occur fossil in our London clay. The cally into genera and species. The genera are these six: a. Palmacites, containing fifteen species. b. Casuarinites, containing five. c. Calamites, containing ten. d. Filicites, containing twenty-three. e. Lycopodiolithes, containing five. f. Poacites, containing four. In the whole sixty-two species. 4. CARPOLITHES. Of which Baron Schlotheim enumerates fifteen species at present in his collection. This division is considered as a genus, as is also the next. 5. ANTHOTYPOLITHES. The baron's cabinet contains only one species, namely the Anthotypolithes ranunculiformis. Zoophytes, which form the link between vegetables and shellfish, are little less obscure than the plants; and we are again struck with the want of agreement between the organic productions of the ancient and of the present world. As far as the investigation has been pursued, it would seem that the zoophytes of those remote and mysterious times were not less numerous and beautiful than those of our own days. Mr. Parkinson examined 170 fossil corals, and found nearly the whole differed from any that are now known. "In my attempt," says this able observer, "to preserve a parallel between the recent and the fossil species, I have been most completely foiled. Indeed, so little could this parallel be preserved, that I am under the necessity of acknowledging I am not certain of the existence of the recent analogue of any one mineralized coral." genus cypræa contains about 110 living species, and only four fossil in the tertiary beds. Thus, during the revolutions of ages, some races have been extinguished, and have given place to others which may still be traced in our seas. In the great tertiary deposites of the Sub-Apennines, Brocchi conceived he could point out some marine shells, which are now very widely dispersed in the Indian and American oceans, the Atlantic, the Red sea, the Persian gulf, and the coasts of Africa and Jamaica. When we consider the enormous proportion of insects to the rest of the animated beings in the present world,-being, according to Baron Humboldt, no less than 44,000 out of 51,700,-we might expect to discover more frequent traces of these tribes in the fossil world. Whether they did not prevail in such numbers during the former period of the globe, or whether, as is most probable, the extreme delicacy of their structure was unfavourable to their preservation, we have only the fact, that but scanty traces of their former existence, particularly in the elder beds, do now appear. Of birds the remains also are of rare occurrence, and the same remark might be applied to them, with respect to proportion, as to the preceding order. It does seem a singular circumstance, that more birds have not been found fossil, when we consider that they now are, as regards species, five times as numerous as the mammalia. Of fishes, the most common form in which they are found is compressed between the lamina of sandstones, schists, calcareous slates, and Purbeck marble. Their teeth, scales, and vertebræ are abundant in many formations between the lias and London clay, particularly in the latter, and are even yet more plentiful in the Suffolk crag beds. These teeth are commonly ascribed to varieties of sharks. A vast collection of impressions of fish have long been known to exist in the calcareous schist of Monte Bolca, many of which have been identified with living species. In M. Bozza's collection, out of 100 known fishes, 4 were ascertained to be similar to those living in the seas of Otaheite. In the Paris museum, containing 62 species, 28 are said to be common to European seas; 14 to Indian seas; 2 to African; 13 to South American; and 5 to North American. In another collection, of 105 species, from the same place, M. Saussure decided that 34 resemble those of European seas; 39 Asiatic; 3 African; 18 South American; 11 North American. When the shellfish that inhabit our ocean are compared with the fossil tribes, essential specific differences are perceived; and these differences become more striking as we recede from the latest formations. In our crag and fresh-water beds some species may be discovered which possess a strong similarity, if not absolute identity, with those living in our lakes and seas. Even here, the identity is maintained but by a limited number, which are intermixed with numerous others that have no recent analogues. Investigations in fossil conchology lead, therefore, to one result; that, with the inconsiderable exceptions that have been stated, the species have not been perpetuated to our times. One of the most remarkable facts elicited is, that certain testacea, whose genera were abundantly preserved and prolonged through so many formations, should now exist so sparingly, or be entirely lost. We Of oviparous quadrupeds (amphibia,) several genmight instance the terebratulæ, which abound no less era are now known in different formations; but it in the mountain limestone than in the chalk, and in does not appear that the fossil skeletons of these almost every intermediate rock, which are absent in animals assimilate precisely to living species. nearly every one of our tertiary beds, and re-appear far the greater number are of extraordinary conforin the most recent. Not less than 100 fossil species mation. Thus, the plesiosaurus approaches to the of terebratulæ, and myriads of individuals, are known genus crocodile, but possesses double the number of to us; but the recent shells of this genus are com- vertebræ; a neck resembling the body of a serpent; paratively few. Of trigonia, also, 25 species are the head of a lizard; instead of feet, it has swimmers found in our strata, often abundantly, and termi- like a whale, or paddles like those of turtles, and in nating, like the ammonites, with the chalk. Until other respects its proportions present some approach lately, this genus was considered to be extinct; but to those animals. The ichthyosaurus recedes from one species has been discovered on the shores of New the form of the lizard family, and in the structure of Holland. Of ammonites, so profusely distributed, its vertebræ it approaches that of fishes. It has whose species amount, it is said, to no less than 200, forty-one cervical and dorsal vertebræ, and is also and of which about 175 are known in the English | furnished with paddles, intermediate between feet By |