If the productions
of the sea shall here be found collected along with bodies belonging to
the surface of the earth, and which had never been within the limits of
the sea, this would surely announce to us some strange catastrophe,
of which it would be difficult, perhaps, to form a notion; if, on the
contrary, those marine productions belong to the solid strata of the
earth, in the resolution or decay of which they had been set at liberty,
and were transported in the floods, our author would have no reason from
those appearances to conclude, there had existed any other deluge than
those produced by the waters of the land[25].
[Note 25: Since writing this, I find my doubts in a great measure
resolved, in reading M. Pallas's Journal, translated from the German by
M. Gauthier de la Peyronie. What I had suspected is, I think, confirmed
in the distinct account which M. Pallas has given of those occasions
in which the bones of land animals and marine objects are found buried
together. The marine objects are mineralised; consequently, they have
proceeded from the decomposition of the solid strata; and, having been
travelled in the running water of the surface of the earth, they must
have been deposited in those beds of rivers, which now are dry, alongst
with the bones, or the entire bodies of terrestrial animals, the remains
of which are now found there.
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