This caution with regard to the inaccurate representation of
facts, in natural history, is certainly extremely necessary; the relicts
of an elephant found in a mineral vein, is certainly a fact of that
kind, which should not be given as an example in geology without the
most accurate scientifical examination of the subject.]
Here M. Pallas gives his reason for supposing those mountains primitive
or anterior to the operations of this globe as a living world; _first_,
because they have not, in general, marks of animals or plants; and that
it is doubtful if they ever properly contain those marks of organised
bodies; _secondly_, because many of those rocks have the appearance of
having suffered the effects of the most violent fire. Now, What are
those effects? Is it in their having been brought into a fluid state of
fusion. In that case, no doubt, they may have been much changed from the
original state of their formation; but this is a very good reason why,
in this changed state, the marks of organised bodies, which may have
been in their original constitution, should be now effaced.
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