The production of vegetable bodies, again, requires
the constitution of sea and land, and the system of a living world,
sustaining plants at least, if not animals.
In this natural history of the alpine schisti, therefore, we have a
most interesting fact, an example which is extremely rare. Seldom are
calcareous organised bodies found among those alpine strata, but still
more rarely, I believe, are the marks of vegetable bodies having
contributed in the formation of those masses. But however rare this
example, it is equally decisive of the question, Whether the alpine
schisti have had a similar origin as the other strata of the globe,
in which are found abundance of animal and vegetable bodies, or their
relics? and we are authorised to say, that since those perfect alpine
strata of Dauphine have had that origin, all the alpine schisti of the
globe have been originally formed in a similar manner. But to put this
matter out of doubt:
In this summer 1788, coming from the Isle of Man, Mr Clerk and I
traveled through the alpine schistus country of Cumberland and
Westmoreland.
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