except the few bones that may have been collected in caves, or buried under land slips, or the products of volcanic eruptions, or in sand drifted by the winds,[1] it is only in strata formed by water that any remains of land animals can ave been preserved.
We continually see the carcasses of such animals drifted by rivers in their seasons of flood, into lakes, estuaries, and seas; and although it may at first seem strange to find terrestrial remains, imbedded in strata formed at the bottom of the water, the difficulty vanishes on recollection that the materials of stratified rocks are derived in great part from the Detritus of more ancient lands. As the forces of rains, torrents, and inundation shave conveyed this detritus into lakes, estuaries, and seas, it is probable that many carcasses of terrestrial and amphibious animals, should also have been drifted to great distances by currents which swept such
- ↑ Captain Lyon states, that in the deserts of Africa, the bodies of camels are often dessicated by the heat and dryness of the atmosphere, and become the nucleus of a sand-hill; which the wind accumulates around them. Beneath this sand they remain interred like the stumps of palm trees, and the buildings of ancient Egypt.
In a recent paper on the geology of the Bermudas (Proceedings of Geol. Soc. Lond. Ap. 9, 1834), Lieutenant Nelson describes these islands as composed of calcareous sand and limestone, derived from comminuted shells and corals; he considers great part of the materials of these strata to have been drifted up from the shore by the action of the wind. The surface in many parts is composed of loose sand, disposed in all the irregular forms of drifted snow. and presents a surface covered with undulations like those produced by the ripple of water upon sand on the seashore. Recent shells occur both in the loose sand and solid limestone, and also roots of the Palmetto now growing in the island. The N. W. coast of Cornwall affords examples of similar invasions of many thousand acres of land by Deluges of sand drilled from the sea-shore, at the villages of Bude and Perran Zabulo; the latter village has been twice destroyed, and buried under sand, drifted inland during extraordinary tempests, at distant intervals of time. See Trans. of Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, vol. ii. p. 140, and vol. iii. p 12. See also De la Beche's Geological Manual, 3d edit. p. 84, and Jameson's Translation of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 5th ed. Note G.
