| → years! Now turn to our richest geological museums, and what a paltry display we behold! 1866 |
| years! 1859 1860 1861 |
|
| ↑ 1 blocks not present in 1866 1869 1872; present in 1859 1860 1861 |
| Now turn to our richest geological museums, and what a paltry display we behold!
|
|
| → numbers of our 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| very many 1872 |
|
| → I believe we are continually taking a most 1859 1860 1861 1866 |
| I believe we often take an 1869 |
| We probably take a quite 1872 |
|
| → tacitly admit to ourselves 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869 |
| assume 1872 |
|
|
of the lapse of
During each
over the whole world, the land and the water
been peopled by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of
→years! Now turn to our richest geological museums, and what a paltry display we behold!
↑
|
|
That our
collections are
is admitted by every one. The remark of that admirable palæontologist,
Edward Forbes, should
be forgotten, namely, that
→numbers of our
fossil species are known and named from single and often broken specimens, or from a few specimens collected on some one spot. Only a small portion of the surface of the earth has been geologically explored, and no part with sufficient care, as the important discoveries made every year in Europe prove. No organism wholly soft can be preserved. Shells and bones
decay and disappear when left on the bottom of the sea, where sediment is not
→I believe we are continually taking a most
erroneous view, when we
→tacitly admit to ourselves
that sediment is being deposited over nearly the whole bed of the sea, at a rate sufficiently quick to embed and preserve fossil remains. Throughout an enormously large proportion of the ocean, the bright blue tint of the water bespeaks its purity. The many cases on record of a formation conformably covered, after an
interval of time, by another and later formation, without the underlying bed having suffered in the interval any wear and
seem explicable only on the view of the bottom of the sea not rarely lying for ages in an unaltered condition. The remains which do become embedded, if
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