All geological facts tell us plainly that each area has undergone numerous
slow oscillations of level, and apparently these oscillations have affected
wide spaces. Consequently, formations rich in fossils and sufficiently
thick and extensive to resist subsequent degradation, will have been formed
over wide spaces during periods of subsidence, but only where the supply of
sediment was sufficient to keep the sea shallow and to embed and preserve
the remains before they had time to decay. On the other hand, as long as
the bed of the sea remained stationary, THICK deposits cannot have been
accumulated in the shallow parts, which are the most favourable to life.
Still less can this have happened during the alternate periods of
elevation; or, to speak more accurately, the beds which were then
accumulated will generally have been destroyed by being upraised and
brought within the limits of the coast-action.
These remarks apply chiefly to littoral and sublittoral deposits. In the
case of an extensive and shallow sea, such as that within a large part of
the Malay Archipelago, where the depth varies from thirty or forty to sixty
fathoms, a widely extended formation might be formed during a period of
elevation, and yet not suffer excessively from denudation during its slow
upheaval; but the thickness of the formation could not be great, for owing
to the elevatory movement it would be less than the depth in which it was
formed; nor would the deposit be much consolidated, nor be capped by
overlying formations, so that it would run a good chance of being worn away
by atmospheric degradation and by the action of the sea during subsequent
oscillations of level.
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