The supposed melons of Mount Carmel, subjects of fraud by the monks of that place, are geodes ; and, on the same principle, there have been produced lupins, or peas, thus changed into stone by miraculous agencies. Thus pisolites have been supposed to consist of petrified peas, as oolites have sometimes been derived from poppy seeds, as well as from the roes of fish. Nay, even loaves of bread have been thus found petrified in Germany ; and we our selves have seen a duck and a shoulder of mutton of the same description. But these were in the days of wonder and ignorance ; and, if we still partake in some measure of the latter with our ancestors, we are in no danger of adding to what is naturally wonderful enough on this sub ject, by our own imaginations.
Having thus given as long a sketch as we could admit, of the nature of vegetable remains, we shall proceed to the great class of animals. Here we tread on firmer ground ; as, from their very nature, many of these are so perfectly preserved as to leave no difficulty respecting their examination. Thus, in very many cases, we can easily determine at least their general affinities. In others, their generic characters can be compared with those of existing species ; while in a third set, even the species can he ascertained. It is, therefore, among these that we must look for identities, or otherwise, with the present liv;ng races ; and when we even cannot find any such, we can still arrange the different objects according to the general laws of classification, so as to form a body of subterranean or extinct zoology in its several branches.
As among these multifarious objects, some are marine and others terrestrial, we might have here made a cor responding division in our subject ; but it appeared pre ferable to arrange them rather according to their charac ters as parts of animated nature; an arrangement which we shall only depart from on one point, for the sake of keeping the terrestrial insects free from the marine ones. We shall also here confine ourselves to the animals them selves; as the strata which they occupy, and the states in which they are found, have already been sufficiently dis cussed; and as we reserve to the last place all the impor tant general conclusions, whether geological or otherwise, that may be drawn from the various circumstances at tending these fossil remains of former worlds. \Vb need only add, that as the multitude of these objects is enor mous, we must necessarily limit ourselves to a few ; to such as are sufficient to illustrate each division in an in telligible manner.
Of Fossil Terrestrial Insects.
It is no cause of surprise that these have not been of tener preserved, when we consider their general minute ness, and their very tender and perishable nature. Ac cordingly they have hitherto almost passed unnoticed by writers on this subject, though it is plain that we do pos sess such specimens. Among these are, in the first place,
the insects that are occasionally found preserved in amber. We cannot here enter into all the disputes that have been entertained respecting the nature and origin of this sub stance ; nor, indeed, does it seem to us attended with any difficulty. As to its situation in the earth, it is known to occur on the eastern shores of England, and on the oppo site continent, as well as in the Baltic ; where not only the ancient Romans carried on a great trade in it, but where it appears to have been a principal cause of the extension their conquests in this direction.
Now, although it is found in these places only in a recent alluvial soil, having been transferred by modern changes from its original seat, we have indications of the nature of the alluvia in which it must first have existed. These consist in the presence of jet, which we also know to have belonged to the deepest of those very ancient alluvia that contain lignites, of which it is the most highly condensed, and the most perfectly bituminized. To con firm this view of the true original scat of amber, we have only to remark, that, as well as jet, it has been found in its natural alluvia, undisturbed, in France and in Germany.
Thus, the antiquity of amber stands on the same ground as that of the oldest lignites, which we know, as before remarked, to he often older than the trap rocks at least, and very probably more so than the fresh-water formations. There is an equal degree of probability, from these very circumstances, that, like jet, it is of vegetable origin ; and that conjecture becomes a certainty, by finding that it in closes the insects that have inhabited the air, as well as by some other analogies which we shall immediately mention. In the brown coal of Bovey, and in the blue clay of Lon don, in different places, there occur fragments of resinous substances which have chemical characters intermediate between the vegetable resins and bitumen ; which, in short, give results similar to those that might be obtained from a mixture of copal and amber. Now, this is a case exactly analogous to that of the imperfect lignites by which they are accompanied. In both, the change from the vegetable matter to bitumen is incomplete. In jet, on the contrary, the wood is completely bituminized, and the amber is also a perfect bitumen ; or, at least, it no longer gives results similar to those of the vegetable resins. Hence, as well as from the presence of the insects, we may safely infer that amber was once some vegetable resin analogous to copal, which, by long residence in the earth, has undergone a change of character exactly resembling that which occurs in jet.