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difficult to avoid believing that they are closely consecutive. But we know, for instance, from Sir R.
Murchison's
Murchisons
great work on Russia, what wide gaps there are in that country between the superimposed formations; so it is in North America, and in many other parts of the world. The most skilful geologist, if his attention had been
exclusively confined
confined exclusively
to these large territories, would never have suspected
that
that,
during the periods which were blank and barren in his own country, great piles of sediment, charged with new and peculiar forms of life, had elsewhere been accumulated. And
if
if,
in each separate territory, hardly
andy
any
idea can be formed of the length of time which has elapsed between the consecutive formations, we may infer that this could nowhere be ascertained. The frequent and great changes in the mineralogical composition of consecutive formations, generally implying great changes in the geography of the surrounding lands, whence the sediment
was
has been
derived,
accord
accords
with the belief of vast intervals of time having elapsed between each formation.
We
But we
can, I think, see why the geological formations of each region are almost invariably intermittent; that is, have not followed each other in close sequence. Scarcely any fact struck me more when examining many hundred miles of the South American coasts, which have been upraised several hundred feet within the recent period, than the absence of any recent deposits sufficiently extensive to last for even a short geological period. Along the whole west coast, which is inhabited by a peculiar marine fauna, tertiary beds are so
scantily
poorly
developed, that no record of several
suc- cessive
successive
and peculiar marine faunas will probably be preserved to a distant age. A little reflection will explain
why
why,
along the rising coast of the western side of South America, no extensive formations with recent or