CHAP V.
PERHAPS geology might never have escaped from the
domain of empiricism and conjecture but for the innumerable
testimonies of elapsed periods and perished
creations, which the stratified rocks of the globe present
in the remains of ancient plants and animals. So
many important questions concerning their nature, circumstances
of existence, and mode of inhumation in
the rocks, have been suggested by the examination of
these interesting reliquiæ, and the natural sciences have
in consequence received so powerful an impulse, and
been directed with such great success to the solution of
problems concerning the past history of the earth, that
we scarcely feel disposed to dissent from the opinion of
Cuvier, "that without (fossil) zoology, there was no
true geology."
The stratified crust of the globe may, without exaggeration, be said to be full of these monuments of the vanished forms of life: they are of extremely various kinds; lie in many different states of preservation; occur very unequally in rocks of different sorts and ages; and thus present a large field of contemplation to the philosophic geologist.
Fossil Plants.
The organic remains both of plants and animals occur abundantly in the earth; the latter are most numerous. Of fossil plants, many are terrestrial, a few are fluviatile, others are marine. In the present system of nature terrestrial plants are, probably, ten times as numerous as the marine tribes, and it does not appear that the ratio of the fossil tribes is very different.
