the deluge very differently disposed to what it is at present, that the
sea and continent had another arrangement, and formerly there was a
great gulph in the middle of Touraine. The changes which are known from
history, or even ancient fable, are inconsiderable, but they give us
room to imagine those which a longer time might bring about. M. de
Reaumur supposes that Touraine was a gulph of the sea which communicated
with the ocean, and that the shells were carried there by a current; but
this is a simple conjecture laid down in room of the real unknown fact.
To speak with certainty on this matter, we should have geographical maps
of all the places where shells have been dug from the earth, to obtain
which would require almost an infinity of time and observation, yet it
is possible that hereafter science may accomplish it.
This quantity of shells, considerable as it is, will astonish us less if
we consider the following circumstances: first, shell fish multiply
prodigiously, and are full grown in a very short time; the abundance of
individuals in each kind proves to us their fertility. We have a strong
example of this increase in oysters, a mass of many fathoms of which are
frequently raised in a single day. In a very short time the rocks to
which they are attached are considerably diminished, and some banks
quite exhausted, nevertheless the ensuing year we find them as plentiful
as before, nor do they appear to be in the least diminished; indeed I
know not whether a natural bed of oysters was ever entirely exhausted.
Secondly, the substance of shells is analogous to stone; they are a long
time preserved in soft matters, and petrify readily in hard; these
shells and marine productions therefore found on the earth, being the
wrecks of many ages, must of course have formed very considerable
masses.
There are a prodigious quantity of shells in marble, lime, stone, chalk,
marl, &c. we find them, as before observed, in hills and mountains, and
they often make more than one half of the bodies which contain them; for
the most part they appear well preserved, others are in fragments, but
large enough to distinguish to what kind of shells they belong. Here our
knowledge on this subject, from observation, finds its limits; but I
shall go further and assert that shells are the intermedium which Nature
adopts for the formation of most kind of stones; that chalks, marls, and
lime-stone are composed only of the powder and pieces of shells; that
consequently the quantities of shells destroyed are infinitely more
considerable than those preserved. I shall here content myself with
indicating the point of view in which we ought to consider the strata of
which the globe is composed. The first stratum is composed of the dust
of the air, the sediment of the rain, dew, and vegetable or animal
parts, reduced to particles; the strata of chalk, marl, lime, stone, and
marble, are composed of the ruins of shells, and other marine
productions, mixed with fragments or whole shells; but the vitrifiable
sand or clay are the matters of which the internal parts of the globe
are composed. They were vitrified when the globe received its form,
which necessarily supposes that the matter was in fusion. The granate,
rock, flint, &c. owe their origin to sand and clay, and are likewise
disposed by strata; but tuffa[227:A], free-stone, and flints (not in
great masses), crystals, metals, pyrites, most minerals, sulphurs, &c.
are matters whose formation is novel, in comparison with marbles,
calcinable stones, chalk, marl, and all other materials disposed in
horizontal strata, and which contain shells and other productions of the
sea.
As the denominations I make use of may appear obscure or equivocal, it
is necessary to explain them. By the term _clay_, I mean not only the
white and yellow, but also blue, soft, hard, foliated, and other clays,
which I look on as the scoria of glass, or as decomposed glass. By the
word _sand_ I always understand vitrifiable sand; and not only
comprehend under this denomination the fine sand which produces
freestone, and which I look upon as powdered glass, or rather pumice
stone, but also the sand which proceeds from the freestone destroyed by
friction, and also the larger sand, as small gravel, which proceeds from
the granate and rock-stone, and is sharp, angular, red, and commonly
found in the bed of rivers or rivulets that derive their waters
immediately from the higher mountains, or hills composed of stone or
granate. The river Armanson conveys a great quantity of this sand; it is
large and brittle, and in fact is only fragments of rock-stone, as
calcinable gravel is of freestone. _Rock-stone_ and _granate_ are one
and the same substance, but I have used both denominations, because
there are many persons who make two different species of them. It is the
same with respect to flints and free-stone in large pieces; I look on
them as kinds of granate, and I call them _large flints_, because they
are disposed like calcinable stone in strata, and to distinguish them
from the flints and free-stone in small masses, and the round flints
which have no regular quarries, and whose beds have a certain extent;
these are of a modern formation, and have not the same origin as the
flints and free-stone in large lumps, which are disposed in regular
strata.
I understand by the term _slate_, not only the blue, which all the world
knows, but white, grey, and red slate: these bodies are generally met
with below laminated clay, and have every appearance of being nothing
more than clay hardened in this strata. Pit coal and jet are matters
which also belong to clay, and are commonly under slate. By the word
_tuffa_, I understood not only the common pumice which appears full of
holes, and, as I may say, organized, but all the beds of stone made by
the sediment of running waters, all the stalactites, incrustations, and
all kinds of stone that dissolve by fire. It is no ways doubtful that
these matters are not modern, and that they every day grow. Tuffa is
only a mass of lapidific matter in which we perceive no distinct strata:
this matter is disposed generally in small hollow cylinders, irregularly
grouped and formed by waters dropt at the foot of mountains, or on the
slope of hills, which contain beds of marl or soft and calcareous earth;
these cylinders, which make one of the specific characters of this kind
of tuffa, is either oblique or vertical according to the direction of
the streams or water which form them. These sort of spurious quarries
have no continuation; their extent is very confined, and proportionate
to the height of the mountains which furnish them with the matter of
their growth. The tuffa every day receiving lapidific juices, those
small cylindrical columns, between which intervals are left, close at
last, and the whole becomes one compact body, but never acquires the
hardness of stone, and is what Agricola terms _Marga tofocea fistulosa_.
In this tuffa are generally found impressions of leaves, trees, and
plants, like those which grow in the environs: terrestrial shells also
are often met with, but never any of the marine kind. The tuffa is
certainly therefore a new matter, which must be ranked with stalactites,
incrustations, &c. all these new matters are kinds of spurious stones,
formed at the expence of the rest, but which never arrive at true
petrification.
Crystal, precious stones, and all those which have a regular figure,
even small flints formed by concentrical beds, whether found in
perpendicular cavities of rocks, or elsewhere, are only exudations of
large flints, or concrete juices of the like matters, and are therefore
spurious stones, and real stalactites of flint or rock.
Shells are never found either in rock, granate, or free-stone, although
they are often met with in vitrifiable sand, from which these matters
derive their origin; this seems to prove that sand cannot unite to form
free-stone or rock but when it is pure, and that if it is mixed with
shells or substances of other kinds, which are heterogeneous to it, its
union is prevented. I have observed the little pebbles which are often
found in beds of sand mixed with shells, but never found any shell
therein: these pebbles are real concretions of free-stone formed in the
sand in the places where it is not mixed with heterogeneous matters
which oppose the formation of larger masses.
We have before observed, that at Amsterdam, which is a very low country,
sea shells were found at 100 feet below the earth, and at
Marly-la-Ville, six miles from Paris, at 75 feet; we likewise meet with
the same at the bottom of mines, and in banks of rocks, beneath a height
of stone 50, 100, 200, and 1000 feet thick, as is apparent in the Alps
and Pyrennees, where, in the lower beds, shells and other marine
productions are constantly found. But to proceed in order, we find
shells on the mountains of Spain, France, and England; in all the marble
quarries of Flanders, in the mountains of Gueldres, in all hills around
Paris, Burgundy, and Champagne; in one word, in every place where the
basis of the soil is not free-stone or tuffa; and in most of these
places there are more shells than other matters in the substance of the
stones. By _shells_, I mean not only the wrecks of shell-fish, but those
of crustaceous animals, the bristles of sea hedge-hogs, and all
productions of the sea insects, as coral, madrepores, astroites, &c. We
may easily be convinced by inspection, that in most calculable stones
and marble, there is so great a quantity of these marine productions
that they appear to surpass the matter which unites them.
But let us proceed; we meet with these marine productions even on the
tops of the highest mountains; for example, on Mount Cenis, in the
mountains of Genes, in the Apennines, and in most of the stone and
marble quarries in Italy; also in the stones of the most ancient
edifices of the Romans; in the mountains of Tirol; in the centre of
Italy, on the summits of Mount Paterne, near Bologna; in the hills of
Calabria; in many parts of Germany and Hungary, and generally in all the
high parts of Europe[233:A].
In Asia and Africa, travellers have remarked them in several parts; for
example, on the mountains of Castravan, above Barut, there is a bed of
white stone as thin as slate, each leaf of which contains a great number
and diversity of fishes; they lie for the most part very flat and
compressed, as does the fossil fearn-plants, but they are
notwithstanding so well preserved, that the smallest traces of the fins,
scales, and all the parts which distinguish each kind of fish, are
perfectly visible. So likewise we find many sea muscles, and petrified
shells between Suez and Cairo, and on all the hills and eminences of
Barbary; the greatest part are conformable to the kinds at present
caught in the Red Sea[234:A]. In Europe, we meet with petrified fish in
Sweden and Germany, and in the quarry of Oningen, &c.
The long chain of mountains, says Bourguet, which extends from Portugal
to the most eastern parts of China, the mountains of Africa and America,
and the vallies of Europe, all inclose stones filled with shell-fish,
and from hence, he says, we may conclude the same of all the other parts
of the world unknown to us.
The islands in Europe, Asia, and America, where men have had occasion to
dig, whether in mountains or plains, furnish examples of fossil shells,
which evince that they have that in common with the bordering
continents.
Here then is sufficient facts to prove that sea shells, petrified fish,
and other marine productions are to be found in almost every place we
are disposed to seek them.
"It is certain, says an English author (Tancred Robinson), that there
have been sea-shells dispersed on the earth by armies, and the
inhabitants of towns and villages, and that Loubere relates in his
Voyage to Siam, that the monkies of the Cape of Good Hope, continually
amuse themselves with carrying shells from the sea shores to the tops of
the mountains; but that cannot resolve the question, why these shells
are dispersed over all the earth, and even in the interior parts of
mountains, where they are deposited in beds like those in the bottom of
the sea."
On reading an Italian letter on the changes happened to the terrestrial
globe, printed at Paris in the year 1746, I was surprised to find these
sentiments of Loubere exactly corresponded. Petrified fish, according to
this writer, are only fish rejected from the Roman tables, because they
were not esteemed wholesome; and with respect to fossil-shells, he says
the pilgrims of Syria brought, during the times of the Crusades, those
of the Levant Sea, into France, Italy, and other Christian states; why
has he not added that it was the monkies who transported the shells to
the tops of these mountains, which were never inhabited by men? This
would not have spoiled but rendered his explanation still more
probable.
How comes it that enlightened persons, who pique themselves on
philosophy, have such various ideas on this subject? But doing so, we
shall not content ourselves with having said that petrified shells are
found in almost every part of the earth which has been dug, nor with
having related the testimonies of authors of natural history; as it
might be suspected, that with a view of some system, they perceived
shells where there were none; but quote the authority of some authors,
who merely remarked them accidentally, and whose observations went no
farther than recognising those that were whole and in the best
preservation. Their testimony will perhaps be of a still greater
authority with people who have it not in their power to be assured of
the truth of these facts, and who know not the difference between shells
and petrifications.
All the world may see the banks of shells in the hills in the environs
of Pans, especially in the quarries of stone, as at Chaussée, near Séve,
at Issy, Passy, and elsewhere. We find a great quantity of lenticular
stones at Villers-Cotterets; these rocks are entirely formed thereof,
and they are blended without any order with a kind of stony mortar,
which binds them together. At Chaumont so great a quantity of petrified
shells are found that the hills appear to be composed of nothing else.
It is the same at Courtagnon, near Rheims, where there is a bank of
shells near four leagues broad, and whose length is considerably more. I
mention these places as being famous and striking the eye of every
beholder.
With respect to foreign countries, here follows the observations of some
travellers:
"In Syria and Phœnicia, the rocks, particularly in the neighbourhood
of Latikea, are a kind of chalky substance, and it is perhaps from
thence that the city has taken the name of the white promontory.
Nakoura, anciently termed Scala Tyriorum, or the Tyrians Ladder, is
nearly of the same nature, and we still find there, by digging,
quantities of all sorts of shells, corals, and other remains of the
deluge[237:A]."
On mount Sinai, we find only a few fossil shells, and other marks of the
deluge, at least if we do not rank the fossil Tarmarin of the
neighbouring mountains of Siam among this number, perhaps the first
matter of which their marble is formed, had a corrosive virtue not
proper to preserve them. But at Corondel, where the rocks approach
nearer our free-stone, I found many shells, as also a very singular sea
muscle, of the descoid kind, but closer and rounder. The ruins of the
little village Ain le Mousa, and many canals which conduct the water
thereto, furnish numbers of fossil shells. The ancient walls of Suez,
and what yet remains of its harbour, have been constructed of the same
materials, which seem to have been taken from the same quarry. Between,
as well as on all the mountains, eminences and hills of Lybia, near
Egypt, we meet with a great quantity of sea weed, as well as vivalvous
shells, and of these which terminate in a point, most of which are
exactly conformable to the kinds at present caught in the Red Sea.
The moving sand in the neighbourhood of Ras Sem, in the kingdom of
Barca, covers many palm trees with petrifications. Ras Sem signifies the
head of a fish, and is what we term the petrified village, where it is
said men, women, and children are found, who with their cattle,
furniture, &c. have been converted into stone; but these, says Shaw, are
vain tales and fables, as I have not only learnt from M. le Maire, who
at the time he was Consul at Tripoly, sent several persons thither to
take cognizance of it, but also from very respectable persons who had
been at those places.
Near the pyramids certain pieces of stone worked by the sculptor, were
found by Mr. Shaw, and among these stones many rude ones of the figure
and size of lentils; some even resemble barley half-peeled; these, he
says, were reported to be the remains of what the workmen ate, but which
does not appear probable, &c. These lentils and barley are nothing but
petrified shells called by naturalists lentil stones.
According to Misson, several sorts of these shell-fish are found in the
environs of Maestricht, especially towards the village of Zicken, or
Tichen, and at the little mountain called Huns. In the environs of
Sienna, near Ceraldo, are many mountains of sand crammed with divers
sorts of shells. Montemario, a mile from Rome, is entirely filled with
them; I have seen them in the Alps, France, and elsewhere. Olearius,
Steno, Cambden, Speed, and a number of other authors, as well ancient as
modern, relate the same phenomena.
"The island of Cerigo, says Thevenot, was anciently called Porphyris,
from the quantity of Porphyry which was taken out of it[240:A].
"Opposite the village of Inchene, and on the eastern shore of the Nile,
I found petrified plants, which grow naturally in a space about two
leagues long, by a very moderate breadth; this is one of the most
singular productions of nature. These plants resemble the white coral
found in the Red Sea[240:B]."
"There are petrifications of divers kinds on Mount Libanus, and among
others flat stones, where the skeletons of fish are found well preserved
and entire; red chesnuts and small branches of coral, the same as grow
in the Red Sea, are also found on this mountain."
"On Mount Carmel we find a great quantity of hollow stones, which have
something of the figure of melons, peaches, and other fruits, which are
said to be so petrified: they are commonly sold to pilgrims, not only as
mere curiosities, but also as remedies against many disorders. The
olives which are the _lapides jadaici_, are to be met with at the
druggists, and have always been looked upon, when dissolved in the
juice of lemon, as a specific for the stone and gravel."
"M. la Roche, a physician, gave me some of these petrified olives, which
grew in great plenty in these mountains, where I am told are found other
stones, the inside of which perfectly resemble the natural parts of men
and women. These are Hysterolithes."
"In going from Smyrna to Tauris, when we were at Tocat, says Tavernier,
the heat was so great, as obliged us to quit the common road, and go by
the mountains, where there is constantly shade and refreshing air. In
many places we found snow and a quantity of very fine sorrel, and on the
top of some of those mountains we found shells like those upon the sea
shores, which was very extraordinary."
Here follows what Olearius says on the subject of petrified shells,
which he remarked in Persia, and in the rocks where the sepulchres are
cut out, near to the village of Pyrmaraus:
"We were three in company that ascended to the top of the rock by the
most frightful precipices, mutually assisting each other; having gained
the summit, we found four large chambers, and within many niches cut in
the rocks to serve for beds: but what the most surprised us was to find
in this vault, on the top of the mountain, muscle shells; and in some
places they were in such great quantities, that the whole rock appeared
to be composed only of sand and shells. Returning to Persia, we
perceived many of these shelly mountains along the coast of the Caspian
sea."
To these I could subjoin many other authorities which I suppress, not
willing to tire those who have no need of superabundant proofs, and who
are convinced by their sight, as I have been, of the existence of shells
wherever we chuse to seek for them.
In France, we not only find the shells of the French coast, but also
such as have never been seen in those seas. Some philosophers assert,
that the quantity of these foreign petrified shells is much greater than
those of our climate; but I think this opinion unfounded; for,
independent of the shell-fish which inhabit the bottom of the sea, and
are seldom brought up by the fishermen, and which consequently may be
looked on as foreigners, although they exist in our seas, I see, by
comparing the petrifactions with the living analagous animals, there
are more of those of our coasts than of others: for example, most of the
cockles, muscles, oysters, ear-shells, limpets, nautili, stars,
tubulites, corals, madrepores, &c. found in so many places, are
certainly the productions of our seas; and though a great number appear
which are foreign or unknown, the cornu ammonis, the lapides juduica,
&c. yet I am convinced, from repeated observations, that the number of
these kinds is small in comparison with the shells of our own coasts:
besides, what composes the bottom of almost all our marble and
lime-stone but madrepores, astroites, and all those other productions
which are formed by sea insects, and formerly called marine plants?
Shells, however abundant, form only a small part of these productions,
many of which originate in our seas, and particularly in the
Mediterranean.
The Red sea produces corals, madrepores, and marine plants in the
greatest abundance: no part furnishes a greater variety than the port of
Tor; in calm weather so great a quantity present themselves, that the
bottom of the sea resembles a forest; some of the branched madrepores
are eight or ten feet high. In the Mediterranean sea, at Marseilles,
near the coasts of Italy and Sicily; in most of the gulphs of the
ocean, around islands, on banks, and in all temperate climates, where
the sea is but of a moderate depth, they are very common.
M. Peyssonel was the first who discovered that corals, madrepores, &c.
owed their origin to animals, and were not plants as had been supposed.
The observation of M. Peyssonel was a long time doubted; some
naturalists, at first, rejected it with a kind of disdain, nevertheless
they have been obliged since to acknowledge its truth, and the whole
world is at length satisfied that these formerly supposed marine plants,
are nothing but hives or cells formed by insects, in which they live as
fish do in their shells. These bodies were, at first, placed in the
class of minerals, then passed into that of vegetables, and now remain
fixed in that of animals, the genuine operations of which they must ever
be considered.
There are shell-fish which live at the bottom of the sea, and which are
never cast on the shore; authors call them Pelogiæ, to distinguish them
from the others which they call Litterales. It is to be supposed the
cornu ammonis, and some other kinds that are only found in a petrified
state, belong to the former, and that they were filled with the stony
sediment in the very places they are found. There might also have been
certain animals, whose species are perished, and of which number this
shell-fish might be ranked. The extraordinary fossil bones found in
Siberia, Canada, Ireland, and many other places, seem to confirm this
conjecture, for no animal has hitherto been discovered to whom such
bones could belong, as they are, for the most part, of an enormous size.
These shells, according to Woodward, are met with from the top to the
bottom of quarries, pits, and at the bottom of the deepest mines of
Hungary. And Mr. Ray assures us, they are found a thousand feet deep in
the rocks which border the isle of Calda, and in Pembrokeshire in
England.