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Show 44 GENERELLI'S EXPOSITION OF . • 1 r before the middle of the last century. The Italy m parttcu a 1' I have carefully preserved the me-b l f the eart 1 says le, . · owe s 0 .·. ls of past eve'n ts, an d this truth the marme. produf ctLto ns mso ofnreaq uent m. t1 le I 'II ttest From the reflectiOns o az- 11 s a . h ~r oro Moro we may ass U r· e ourselves ' that these adre t e euects 0z f earthqua k es m· pas: t t1'mes ' which have c.h ange vast spaIc e. s of sea m• to ter. ra fi r rna ' and inhabited lands .m to seasb. In t· us, more t1 1 an m• any 0 ther department of phys1cs, da'rle' o se1r vahon·s an d expen.m en t s I'ndt' spensable ' and we must kI Igent y co·m n- 'c ler 1-" acts. 'I'l1 C 1a t1 d 1's known ' whereve,r we ma e excavatwns, to b e compose d of dl·nwa erent strata or smls placed one above the otheJ·, some of san d ' Some of . rock ' some o. f chalk, othe. rs .o f marl, coal, pumice, gypsum, hme, and ~he test. These I.ngre-dI. ents are so met1'mes pure ' and sometimes confused. ly mter-mixed. Within are often imprisoned different marme fishes, like dried mummies, and more frequently shells, crustacea, corals, plants, &c., not only in It~ly, but in ~ran~e, Germany, England, Africa, Asia, and America. Sometimes m the lowest, sometimes in the loftiest beds of the earth, some upon the mountains, some in deep mines, others near the sea! and oth~rs hundreds of miles distant from it. But there are m some districts rocks, wherein no marine bodies are found. The remains of animals consist chiefly of their more solid parts, and the most rocky strata must have been soft .when such exu.vire _were inclosed in them. Vegetable productiOns are fou~d m dtffe;ent states of maturity, indicating that they were Imbedded m different seasons. Elephants, elks, and other terrestrial qua- · drupeds, have been found in England and elsewh:rc, in superficial strata, never covered by the sea. AlternatiOns are r~re, yet not without example, of marine strata, and those ':htch contain marshy and terrestrial productions. Marine ammals are arranged in the subterraneous beds with admirable order, in distinct groups, oysters here, dentalia, or corals there, &c., as now, according to Marsilli *, on the shores of the Adriatic. We must abandon the doctrine once so popular, that organized fossils have not been derived from living beings, and we cannot account for their present position by the ancient theory of Strato, nor by that of Leibnitz, nor by the * Saggio fisico intomo alla Storia del Marc, pa1·t i. p. 24. LAZZOR() MOtto's THEORY. 45 universal deluge, as explained by Woodward and others, "nor is it reasonable to call the Deity capriciously upon the stage, and to make him work miracles, for the sake of confirming our preconceived hypotheses.''-" I hold in utter abomination, most learned Academicians! those systems which are built with their foundations in the air, and cannot be propped up without a miracle; and I undertake, with the assistance of Moro, to explain to you, how these marine animals were transported into the mountains by natural causes'X<." A brief abstract then follows of Moro's theory, by which, says GenerelJi, we may explain all the phenomena, as Vallisneri so ardently desired, '' without violence, without fictions, without hypotheses, without miraclest." The Carmelitan then proceeds to struggle against an obvious objection to Moro's system, considered as a method of explaining the revolutions of the earth, naturally. If earthquakes have been the agents of such mighty changes, how does it happen that their effects since the times of history have been so inconsiderable? This same difficulty had, as we have seen, presented itself to Hooke, half a century before, and forced him to resort to a former " crisis of nature ; " but Generelli defended his position by shewing how numerous were the accounts of eruptions and earthquakes, of new islands, and of elevations and subsidences of land, and yet how much greater a number of like events must have been unattested and unrecorded during the last six thousand years. He also appealed to Vallisneri as an authority to prove that the mineral masses containing shells bore, upon the whole, but a small proportion to those rocks which were destitute of organic remains; and the latter, says the learned monk, might have been created as they now exist, in the beginning. He then describes the continual waste of mountains and continents, by the action of rivers and torrents, and concludes with these eloquent and original observations : " Is it possible that this waste should have continued for six thousand, and perhaps a greater number of years, and that the mountains should remain so great, unless their ruins have been repaired? Is it credible that the Author of "' Abbomino al sommo qualsivoglia sistema, che sia di pianta fabbricato in aria; massimc quando e tale, chc non possa sostcncrsi senza un miracolo, &c. De' Crostacei e ui altre prouuz. del Mu.rc, &c.l7L19. t Senza violenze, senza finzioni, scnza supposti, seuza miracoli.-lb. |