Buffon's Natural History, Volume I (of 10)

Our factitious glass undergoes the same alterations: it decomposes and perishes, as it were, in the air. At first, it assumes a variety of colours, then exfoliates, and by working it, we perceive brilliant scales fall off; but when its decomposition is more advanced, it crumbles between the fingers, and is reduced into a very white fine talky powder. Art has even imitated nature in the decomposition of glass and flint. "Est etiam certa methodus solius aquæ communis ope, silices & arenam in liquorem viscosum, eumdemque in sal viride convertendi, & hoc in aleum rubicundum, &c. Solius ignis & aqua ope, speciali experimento, durissimos quosque lapides in mucorem resolvo, qui distillan subtilem spiritum exhibet & oleum nullus laudibus prœdicabile24."

These matters more particularly belong to metals, and when we come to them, shall be fully treated on, therefore we shall content ourselves here with adding, that the different strata which cover the terrestrial globe, being materials to be considered as actual vitrifications or analogous to glass, and possessing its most essential qualities; and as it is evident, that from the decomposition of glass and flint, which is every day made before our eyes, a genuine clay remains, it is not a precarious supposition to advance, that clays and sands have been formed by scoria, and vitrified drops of the terrestrial globe, especially when we join the proofs a priori, which we have given to evince the earth has been in a state of liquefaction caused by fire.

ARTICLE VIII.

ON SHELLS, AND OTHER MARINE PRODUCTIONS FOUND IN THE INTERIOR PARTS OF THE EARTH

I have often examined quarries, the banks of which were filled with shells; I have seen entire hills composed of them, and chains of rocks which contained them throughout their whole extent. The quantity of these marine productions is astonishing, and the number in many places so prodigious, that it appears scarcely possible that any should now remain in the sea; it is by considering this innumerable multitude of shells, that no doubt is left of our earth having been a long time under the water of the ocean. The quantity found in a fossil, or petrified state, is beyond conception, and it is only from the number of those that have been discovered that we could possibly have formed an idea of their multiplicity. We must imagine, like those who reason on matters they never saw, that shells are only found at random, dispersed here and there, or in small heaps, as oyster shells thrown before our doors; on the contrary, they form mountains, are met with in shoals of 100 or 200 miles length, nay, they may sometimes be traced through whole provinces in masses of 50 or 60 feet thick. It is from these circumstances alone that we can reason on the subject.

We cannot give a more striking example on this subject than the shells of Touraine. The following is the description given of them by the historian of the Academy25.

"The number of figured stones and fossil shells found in the bowels of the earth were remarked in all ages and nations, but they were considered merely as the sports of nature, and even by philosophers themselves, as the productions of chance or accident; they regarded them with a degree of surprise, but passed them over with a slight attention, and all this phenomena perished without any fruit for the progress of knowledge. A potter in Paris, who knew neither Latin nor Greek, towards the end of the 16th century, was the first man who dared affirm, in opposition to the learned, that the fossil shells were real shells formerly deposited by the sea in those places where they were found; that animals, and particularly fish, had given to stones all these different figures, &c. and he desired the whole school of Aristotle to contradict his proofs. This was Bernard Palissy, as great a natural genius as nature could form: his system slept near 100 years, and even his name was almost forgot. At length the ideas of Palissy were revived in the mind of several philosophers; and science has profited by all the shells and figured stones the earth furnishes us with; perhaps they are at present become only too common, and the consequences drawn from them too incontestable.

"Notwithstanding this, the observations presented by M. Reaumer must appear wonderful. He discovered a mass of 130 million, 680 thousand cubical fathoms of shells, either whole or in fragments, without any mixture of stone, earth, sand, or other extraneous matter: hitherto fossil shells have never appeared in such an enormous quantity, nor without mixture. It is in Touraine this prodigious mass is found, more than 36 leagues from the sea; this is perfectly known there, as the farmers of that province make use of these shells, which they dig up, as manure for their lands, to fertilize their plains, which otherwise would be absolutely sterile.

"What is dug from the earth, and which generally is no more than eight or nine feet deep, are only small fragments of shells, very distinguishable as fragments, for they retain their original channels and hollows, having only lost their gloss and colour, as almost all shells do which we find in the earth. The smallest pieces, which are only dust, are still distinguishable because they are perfectly of the same matter as the rest, as well as of the whole shells which are sometimes found. We discover the species as well in the whole shells as in the larger fragments. Some of these species are known at Poictou, others belong to more remote coasts. There are even fragments of madrepores, coral, and other productions of the sea; all this matter in the country is termed Fallun, and is found wherever the ground is dug in that province for the space of nine leagues square. The peasants do not dig above twenty feet deep, because they think it would not repay them for their trouble, but they are certainly deeper. The calculation of the quantity is however taken upon the supposition of only 18 feet and 2200 fathoms to the league. This mass of shells of course exceeds the calculation, and possibly contains double the quantity.

"In physical points the smallest circumstances, which most people do not think worthy of remarking, sometimes lead to consequences and afford great lights. M. de Reaumer observed, that all these fragments of shells lie horizontally, and hence he has concluded that this infinity of fragments does not proceed from the heap being formed at one time, or of whole shells, for the uppermost, by their weight, would have crushed the others, and of course their fallings would have given an infinity of different positions. They must, therefore, have been brought there by the sea, either whole or broken, and necessarily placed horizontal; and although the extreme length of time was of itself sufficient to break, and almost calcine the greatest part, it could not change their position.

"By this it appears, that they must have been brought gradually, and, in fact, how was it possible that the sea could convey at once such an immense quantity of shells, and at the same time preserve a position perfectly horizontal? they must have collected in one spot, and consequently this spot must have been the bottom of a gulph or basin.

"All this proves, that although there must remain upon the earth many vestiges of the universal deluge, as recorded in scripture, the mass of shells at Touraine was not produced by that deluge; there is perhaps not so great a mass in any part of the sea; but even had the deluge forced them away, it would have been with an impetuosity and violence that would not have permitted them to retain one uniform position. They must have been brought and deposited gently and slowly, and consequently their accumulation required a space of time much longer than a year."

The surface of the earth, it is evident, must have been before or after the deluge very differently disposed to what it is at present, that the sea and continent had another arrangement, and formerly there was a great gulph in the middle of Touraine. The changes which are known from history, or even ancient fable, are inconsiderable, but they give us room to imagine those which a longer time might bring about. M. de Reaumur supposes that Touraine was a gulph of the sea which communicated with the ocean, and that the shells were carried there by a current; but this is a simple conjecture laid down in room of the real unknown fact. To speak with certainty on this matter, we should have geographical maps of all the places where shells have been dug from the earth, to obtain which would require almost an infinity of time and observation, yet it is possible that hereafter science may accomplish it.

This quantity of shells, considerable as it is, will astonish us less if we consider the following circumstances: first, shell fish multiply prodigiously, and are full grown in a very short time; the abundance of individuals in each kind proves to us their fertility. We have a strong example of this increase in oysters, a mass of many fathoms of which are frequently raised in a single day. In a very short time the rocks to which they are attached are considerably diminished, and some banks quite exhausted, nevertheless the ensuing year we find them as plentiful as before, nor do they appear to be in the least diminished; indeed I know not whether a natural bed of oysters was ever entirely exhausted. Secondly, the substance of shells is analogous to stone; they are a long time preserved in soft matters, and petrify readily in hard; these shells and marine productions therefore found on the earth, being the wrecks of many ages, must of course have formed very considerable masses.

There are a prodigious quantity of shells in marble, lime, stone, chalk, marl, &c. we find them, as before observed, in hills and mountains, and they often make more than one half of the bodies which contain them; for the most part they appear well preserved, others are in fragments, but large enough to distinguish to what kind of shells they belong. Here our knowledge on this subject, from observation, finds its limits; but I shall go further and assert that shells are the intermedium which Nature adopts for the formation of most kind of stones; that chalks, marls, and lime-stone are composed only of the powder and pieces of shells; that consequently the quantities of shells destroyed are infinitely more considerable than those preserved. I shall here content myself with indicating the point of view in which we ought to consider the strata of which the globe is composed. The first stratum is composed of the dust of the air, the sediment of the rain, dew, and vegetable or animal parts, reduced to particles; the strata of chalk, marl, lime, stone, and marble, are composed of the ruins of shells, and other marine productions, mixed with fragments or whole shells; but the vitrifiable sand or clay are the matters of which the internal parts of the globe are composed. They were vitrified when the globe received its form, which necessarily supposes that the matter was in fusion. The granate, rock, flint, &c. owe their origin to sand and clay, and are likewise disposed by strata; but tuffa26, free-stone, and flints (not in great masses), crystals, metals, pyrites, most minerals, sulphurs, &c. are matters whose formation is novel, in comparison with marbles, calcinable stones, chalk, marl, and all other materials disposed in horizontal strata, and which contain shells and other productions of the sea.

As the denominations I make use of may appear obscure or equivocal, it is necessary to explain them. By the term clay, I mean not only the white and yellow, but also blue, soft, hard, foliated, and other clays, which I look on as the scoria of glass, or as decomposed glass. By the word sand I always understand vitrifiable sand; and not only comprehend under this denomination the fine sand which produces freestone, and which I look upon as powdered glass, or rather pumice stone, but also the sand which proceeds from the freestone destroyed by friction, and also the larger sand, as small gravel, which proceeds from the granate and rock-stone, and is sharp, angular, red, and commonly found in the bed of rivers or rivulets that derive their waters immediately from the higher mountains, or hills composed of stone or granate. The river Armanson conveys a great quantity of this sand; it is large and brittle, and in fact is only fragments of rock-stone, as calcinable gravel is of freestone. Rock-stone and granate are one and the same substance, but I have used both denominations, because there are many persons who make two different species of them. It is the same with respect to flints and free-stone in large pieces; I look on them as kinds of granate, and I call them large flints, because they are disposed like calcinable stone in strata, and to distinguish them from the flints and free-stone in small masses, and the round flints which have no regular quarries, and whose beds have a certain extent; these are of a modern formation, and have not the same origin as the flints and free-stone in large lumps, which are disposed in regular strata.

I understand by the term slate, not only the blue, which all the world knows, but white, grey, and red slate: these bodies are generally met with below laminated clay, and have every appearance of being nothing more than clay hardened in this strata. Pit coal and jet are matters which also belong to clay, and are commonly under slate. By the word tuffa, I understood not only the common pumice which appears full of holes, and, as I may say, organized, but all the beds of stone made by the sediment of running waters, all the stalactites, incrustations, and all kinds of stone that dissolve by fire. It is no ways doubtful that these matters are not modern, and that they every day grow. Tuffa is only a mass of lapidific matter in which we perceive no distinct strata: this matter is disposed generally in small hollow cylinders, irregularly grouped and formed by waters dropt at the foot of mountains, or on the slope of hills, which contain beds of marl or soft and calcareous earth; these cylinders, which make one of the specific characters of this kind of tuffa, is either oblique or vertical according to the direction of the streams or water which form them. These sort of spurious quarries have no continuation; their extent is very confined, and proportionate to the height of the mountains which furnish them with the matter of their growth. The tuffa every day receiving lapidific juices, those small cylindrical columns, between which intervals are left, close at last, and the whole becomes one compact body, but never acquires the hardness of stone, and is what Agricola terms Marga tofocea fistulosa. In this tuffa are generally found impressions of leaves, trees, and plants, like those which grow in the environs: terrestrial shells also are often met with, but never any of the marine kind. The tuffa is certainly therefore a new matter, which must be ranked with stalactites, incrustations, &c. all these new matters are kinds of spurious stones, formed at the expence of the rest, but which never arrive at true petrification.

Crystal, precious stones, and all those which have a regular figure, even small flints formed by concentrical beds, whether found in perpendicular cavities of rocks, or elsewhere, are only exudations of large flints, or concrete juices of the like matters, and are therefore spurious stones, and real stalactites of flint or rock.

Shells are never found either in rock, granate, or free-stone, although they are often met with in vitrifiable sand, from which these matters derive their origin; this seems to prove that sand cannot unite to form free-stone or rock but when it is pure, and that if it is mixed with shells or substances of other kinds, which are heterogeneous to it, its union is prevented. I have observed the little pebbles which are often found in beds of sand mixed with shells, but never found any shell therein: these pebbles are real concretions of free-stone formed in the sand in the places where it is not mixed with heterogeneous matters which oppose the formation of larger masses.

We have before observed, that at Amsterdam, which is a very low country, sea shells were found at 100 feet below the earth, and at Marly-la-Ville, six miles from Paris, at 75 feet; we likewise meet with the same at the bottom of mines, and in banks of rocks, beneath a height of stone 50, 100, 200, and 1000 feet thick, as is apparent in the Alps and Pyrennees, where, in the lower beds, shells and other marine productions are constantly found. But to proceed in order, we find shells on the mountains of Spain, France, and England; in all the marble quarries of Flanders, in the mountains of Gueldres, in all hills around Paris, Burgundy, and Champagne; in one word, in every place where the basis of the soil is not free-stone or tuffa; and in most of these places there are more shells than other matters in the substance of the stones. By shells, I mean not only the wrecks of shell-fish, but those of crustaceous animals, the bristles of sea hedge-hogs, and all productions of the sea insects, as coral, madrepores, astroites, &c. We may easily be convinced by inspection, that in most calculable stones and marble, there is so great a quantity of these marine productions that they appear to surpass the matter which unites them.

But let us proceed; we meet with these marine productions even on the tops of the highest mountains; for example, on Mount Cenis, in the mountains of Genes, in the Apennines, and in most of the stone and marble quarries in Italy; also in the stones of the most ancient edifices of the Romans; in the mountains of Tirol; in the centre of Italy, on the summits of Mount Paterne, near Bologna; in the hills of Calabria; in many parts of Germany and Hungary, and generally in all the high parts of Europe27.

In Asia and Africa, travellers have remarked them in several parts; for example, on the mountains of Castravan, above Barut, there is a bed of white stone as thin as slate, each leaf of which contains a great number and diversity of fishes; they lie for the most part very flat and compressed, as does the fossil fearn-plants, but they are notwithstanding so well preserved, that the smallest traces of the fins, scales, and all the parts which distinguish each kind of fish, are perfectly visible. So likewise we find many sea muscles, and petrified shells between Suez and Cairo, and on all the hills and eminences of Barbary; the greatest part are conformable to the kinds at present caught in the Red Sea28. In Europe, we meet with petrified fish in Sweden and Germany, and in the quarry of Oningen, &c.

The long chain of mountains, says Bourguet, which extends from Portugal to the most eastern parts of China, the mountains of Africa and America, and the vallies of Europe, all inclose stones filled with shell-fish, and from hence, he says, we may conclude the same of all the other parts of the world unknown to us.

The islands in Europe, Asia, and America, where men have had occasion to dig, whether in mountains or plains, furnish examples of fossil shells, which evince that they have that in common with the bordering continents.

Here then is sufficient facts to prove that sea shells, petrified fish, and other marine productions are to be found in almost every place we are disposed to seek them.

"It is certain, says an English author (Tancred Robinson), that there have been sea-shells dispersed on the earth by armies, and the inhabitants of towns and villages, and that Loubere relates in his Voyage to Siam, that the monkies of the Cape of Good Hope, continually amuse themselves with carrying shells from the sea shores to the tops of the mountains; but that cannot resolve the question, why these shells are dispersed over all the earth, and even in the interior parts of mountains, where they are deposited in beds like those in the bottom of the sea."

On reading an Italian letter on the changes happened to the terrestrial globe, printed at Paris in the year 1746, I was surprised to find these sentiments of Loubere exactly corresponded. Petrified fish, according to this writer, are only fish rejected from the Roman tables, because they were not esteemed wholesome; and with respect to fossil-shells, he says the pilgrims of Syria brought, during the times of the Crusades, those of the Levant Sea, into France, Italy, and other Christian states; why has he not added that it was the monkies who transported the shells to the tops of these mountains, which were never inhabited by men? This would not have spoiled but rendered his explanation still more probable.

How comes it that enlightened persons, who pique themselves on philosophy, have such various ideas on this subject? But doing so, we shall not content ourselves with having said that petrified shells are found in almost every part of the earth which has been dug, nor with having related the testimonies of authors of natural history; as it might be suspected, that with a view of some system, they perceived shells where there were none; but quote the authority of some authors, who merely remarked them accidentally, and whose observations went no farther than recognising those that were whole and in the best preservation. Their testimony will perhaps be of a still greater authority with people who have it not in their power to be assured of the truth of these facts, and who know not the difference between shells and petrifications.

All the world may see the banks of shells in the hills in the environs of Pans, especially in the quarries of stone, as at Chaussée, near Séve, at Issy, Passy, and elsewhere. We find a great quantity of lenticular stones at Villers-Cotterets; these rocks are entirely formed thereof, and they are blended without any order with a kind of stony mortar, which binds them together. At Chaumont so great a quantity of petrified shells are found that the hills appear to be composed of nothing else. It is the same at Courtagnon, near Rheims, where there is a bank of shells near four leagues broad, and whose length is considerably more. I mention these places as being famous and striking the eye of every beholder.

With respect to foreign countries, here follows the observations of some travellers:

"In Syria and Phœnicia, the rocks, particularly in the neighbourhood of Latikea, are a kind of chalky substance, and it is perhaps from thence that the city has taken the name of the white promontory. Nakoura, anciently termed Scala Tyriorum, or the Tyrians Ladder, is nearly of the same nature, and we still find there, by digging, quantities of all sorts of shells, corals, and other remains of the deluge29."

On mount Sinai, we find only a few fossil shells, and other marks of the deluge, at least if we do not rank the fossil Tarmarin of the neighbouring mountains of Siam among this number, perhaps the first matter of which their marble is formed, had a corrosive virtue not proper to preserve them. But at Corondel, where the rocks approach nearer our free-stone, I found many shells, as also a very singular sea muscle, of the descoid kind, but closer and rounder. The ruins of the little village Ain le Mousa, and many canals which conduct the water thereto, furnish numbers of fossil shells. The ancient walls of Suez, and what yet remains of its harbour, have been constructed of the same materials, which seem to have been taken from the same quarry. Between, as well as on all the mountains, eminences and hills of Lybia, near Egypt, we meet with a great quantity of sea weed, as well as vivalvous shells, and of these which terminate in a point, most of which are exactly conformable to the kinds at present caught in the Red Sea.

The moving sand in the neighbourhood of Ras Sem, in the kingdom of Barca, covers many palm trees with petrifications. Ras Sem signifies the head of a fish, and is what we term the petrified village, where it is said men, women, and children are found, who with their cattle, furniture, &c. have been converted into stone; but these, says Shaw, are vain tales and fables, as I have not only learnt from M. le Maire, who at the time he was Consul at Tripoly, sent several persons thither to take cognizance of it, but also from very respectable persons who had been at those places.

Near the pyramids certain pieces of stone worked by the sculptor, were found by Mr. Shaw, and among these stones many rude ones of the figure and size of lentils; some even resemble barley half-peeled; these, he says, were reported to be the remains of what the workmen ate, but which does not appear probable, &c. These lentils and barley are nothing but petrified shells called by naturalists lentil stones.