184

and those now growing between the tropics,is merely accidental ? that they are produc-tions of a similar climate if you please, butnot of the same world ?

Alarmed by the conclusions which ne-cessarily flow from such premises, as thatour northern strata owe their fossil produc-tions to southern climates, many naturalistshave of late attempted to prove, that thefossils in question, though reputed tropi-cal, do in fact exist in seas nearer home;but, though they should succeed in this at-tempt, which I doubt, the chief difficulty willstill remain ; tor let it be assumed that thearchetypes of shells found in France , arethose of the Atlantic; in Italy , those of theAdriatic and Mediterranean; still we mightas well suppose, that Hannibal obtained hisvinegar from a modern commissariat, as sup-pose, that the fossil shells of France and Italy were derived from the seas in their vicinity,before those seas were in existence.

That the Deluge in question was posteriorto the birth of mineral veins, and many, ifnot all, basaltic dykes, is deducible from the