Lastly, many great
deposits, requiring a vast length of time for their accumulation, are
entirely destitute of organic remains, without our being able to assign any
reason: one of the most striking instances is that of the Flysch
formation, which consists of shale and sandstone, several thousand,
occasionally even six thousand feet in thickness, and extending for at
least 300 miles from Vienna to Switzerland; and although this great mass
has been most carefully searched, no fossils, except a few vegetable
remains, have been found.
With respect to the terrestrial productions which lived during the
Secondary and Palaeozoic periods, it is superfluous to state that our
evidence is fragmentary in an extreme degree. For instance, until recently
not a land-shell was known belonging to either of these vast periods, with
the exception of one species discovered by Sir C. Lyell and Dr. Dawson in
the carboniferous strata of North America; but now land-shells have been
found in the lias. In regard to mammiferous remains, a glance at the
historical table published in Lyell's Manual, will bring home the truth,
how accidental and rare is their preservation, far better than pages of
detail. Nor is their rarity surprising, when we remember how large a
proportion of the bones of tertiary mammals have been discovered either in
caves or in lacustrine deposits; and that not a cave or true lacustrine bed
is known belonging to the age of our secondary or palaeozoic formations.
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