The Lowest And Most Level Land Areas

The Lowest And Most Level Land Areas Show Us, Especially When We Dig There To Very Great Depths, Nothing But Horizontal Layers Of Material More Or Less Varied, Which Almost All Contain Innumerable Products Of The Sea.

It Is In This Mutual Dependence Of The Functions And The Aid Which They Reciprocally Lend One Another That Are Founded The Laws Which Determine The Relations Of Their Organs And Which Possess A Necessity Equal To That Of Metaphysical Or Mathematical Laws, Since It Is Evident That The Seemly Harmony Between Organs Which Interact Is A Necessary Condition Of Existence Of The Creature To Which They Belong And That If One Of These Functions Were Modified In A Manner Incompatible With The Modifications Of The Others The Creature Could No Longer Continue To Exist.

The Appearance Of The Bones Of Quadrupeds, Especially Those Of Complete Bodies In The Strata, Tells Us Either That The Layer Itself Which Carries Them Was In Earlier Times Dry Land Or That Dry Land Was At Least Formed In The Immediate Area.

It Is Evident That One Cannot Say Anything Demonstrable About The Problem Before Having Resolved These Preliminary Questions, And Yet We Hardly Possess The Necessary Information To Solve Some Of Them

It Is To Them [fossils] Alone That We Owe The Commencement Of Even A Theory Of The Earth ... By Them We Are Enabled To Ascertain, With The Utmost Certainty, That Our Earth Has Not Always Been Covered Over By The Same External Crust, Because We Are Thoroughly Assured That The Organized Bodies To Which These Fossil Remains Belong Must Have Lived Upon The Surface Before They Came To Be Buried, As They Now Are, At A Great Depth.