MARINE REMAINS

MARINE REMAINS, a term used by many authors to express the shells of sea-fishes, and parts of crustaceans and other sea-animals, found in digging at great depths in the earth, or on the tops of high mountains. Their being lodged in these places, is an evident and unquestionable proof of the sea's having once been there, since it must have covered those places where it has left its productions. It has been a favourite system with many, and particularly with the late Dr Woodward, that all these marine bodies were brought to the places where they now lie, by the waters of the universal deluge; which, as we are informed by holy writ, covered the whole surface of the globe, and even the highest mountains. But though this is a very ready expedient to account for many of the natural

phenomena, yet there are evident proofs that it cannot have been the cause of all that is attributed to it; and there must necessarily have been some other cause of many of these remains having been placed where we now find them. Neither does the opinion of some particular authors, that partial inundations of different places have left these marine bodies behind them at the recess of the waters, seem sufficient to account for the multitudes of these remains, many of which we find thrown upon places inaccessible to such floods.

Signor Moro has attempted to account for these phenomena on a new plan of reasoning. He observes, that it is the best basis of argument to begin from facts; and that if we can certainly find how some part of these animal remains come to be deposited at such great distances from their natural residence, we may very rationally conclude, that by the same means, be they what they will, all the rest were also brought thither. He adds, that the earth, once the bottom of the sea, or the level surface of a plain, may be, and frequently has been, in the memory of man, raised up into a mountain by subterranean fires, earthquakes, and volcanoes. He mentions the famous instance of the new island raised out of the bottom of the sea near Santorini in the year 1707, which became of a circumference not less than six miles, and of the new mountain raised near Pozzoli in 1538.

These, and many other like facts, prove that the origin of mountains and islands may have been such, and that the matter they consist of may have been the same with what was once the bottom of the sea; and that the marine bodies found in these mountains were such as were living, or remaining of living fish at the time when the islands or mountains were so raised above the surface of the water which before covered it.

This is no new opinion; but this author has set it in a new and much stronger light than it ever had appeared in before, by the instances and examples he has brought in proof of it. Some have been fond of believing that the bodies we call marine remains, were never indeed any parts of living animals, but that they are mere lusi nature formed in the places where they are found; but Fabius Columna proved this to be an error, showing that the shark's teeth, or glossopterae of the island of Malta, when calcined by a strong fire, yielded ashes the same with those from animal-bodies, and by no means of the same nature with those produced from calcined stones.

That changes of parts of the bottom of the sea into dry land, have often been made, is proved not only from the late known instances, but from the testimonies of Strabo, Pliny, and other writers of credit; and nothing is more obvious to reason, than that in the sudden rise of such parts of the bottom of the sea, all its contents, all the shells, and other hard parts of fishes lying there, would be carried up with it.

As some mountains and some islands must have certainly been produced in this manner, it is not impossible but that all of them may have been so; and there is no more than this required to account clearly and evidently for all the vast profusion of marine bodies at land as we find them, without having recourse to the improbable means of the universal deluge, which for many plain reasons cannot have been the cause; or to the

the effects of particular inundations, which must have been wholly incapable of lodging many of them there. The lodgment of shells in the solid strata of mountains, is better accounted for by this system of Signor Moro than any other: and if it be asked why some mountains afford them in great plenty, and others not at all, it will not be difficult to answer, by observing, that among the mountains of the more known parts of the world, some consist of mere solid rock, and others of various strata of earthy and other matter; that the first of these may be supposed primary or natural mountains, and the others secondary or accidental ones; and that these marine remains are always wanting in the former, and usually are found in the latter, which is a fact greatly favourable to this system.

There are many difficulties attending the accounts of all authors of the formation of the earth, and the lodging these bodies in it; nor is this last system without difficulty. The causes here assigned as to the origin of mountains and islands, doubtless have been so in regard to some, but scarce to all; and the bodies here treated of are so numerous, in some particular places, that scarce any account can solve the difficulty of their being collected together in so strange a manner.