aster of the
globe, are as certain as the destruction of a former and
different order, and the extinction of a number of living
forms, which have types in being. In the oldest secondary
strata there are no remains of such animals as now belong to
the surface; and in the rocks which may be regarded as most
recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and with
abundance of distinct species;--there seems, as it were, a
gradual approach to the present system of things, and a
succession of destructions and creations preparatory to the
existence of man."

We have stated that the zoophytes and shell-fish have left the most
numerous fossil remains. Those of other families are not however rare.
Fish, for instance, are found in great abundance, near Glarus in
Switzerland, in clay slate; in Germany, at Papenheim, in a slaty marle,
in the cupriferous slate of Eisleben, in the fetid limestone of
Oehningen. They are also found in Egypt, and we have specimens of the
same sort from Lyria, in a limestone apparently belonging to the oolitic
or Jura formation. China and the coast of Coromandel have also fossils
of this sort, but by far the greatest quantity have been procured from
Mount Bolea, near Verona. A splendid suite from the last locality are to
be seen in the Gibbs' Cabinet at New-Haven. Besides the impressions of
entire fish, separate portions are very abundant, and perhaps the most
frequent of these are the teeth of sharks, which are sometimes of a
magnitude vastly greater than those of any living species. Animals of
the class of amphibia appear not to have existed until after the aera
that gave birth to fish. The oldest are probably the tortoises, of which
a specimen has been found in sandstone near Berlingen. They have also
been found in England, in the Netherlands near Brussels, at Aix in
Provence, and in the quarries near Paris. The most remarkable fossils of
this class belong, however, to the lizard family. Of these the most
remarkable are the plesiosaurus, the megalosaurus, the iguanodon, and
the crocodile of Maestricht, all belonging to extinct species.

The marine animals that are met with in a fossil state, are in great
part foreign to the climates in which they are found buried. It has been
shown that the fish of Bolea have their nearest living prototypes in the
seas of Otaheite. The perpites of Gothland have been supposed to be
petrifactions of the medusae of