of different species, have fallen in when crossing the frozen surface in winter, for nothing can be more treacherous than the ice when covered with snow, in consequence of the springs, which are numerous, and which, always retaining an equal temperature, cause the ice, in certain spots, to be extremely thin, while, in every other part of the lake, it is strong enough to bear the heaviest weights.

As the bones of mammalia are often so abundantly preserved in peat, and in such lakes as we have just described, the encroachments of a sea upon a coast may sometimes throw down the imbedded skeletons, so that they may be carried away by tides and currents, and entombed in subaqueous formations. Some of the smaller quadrupeds, also, which burrow in the ground, as well as reptiles and every species of plant, are liable to be cast down into the waves by this cause, which must not be overlooked, although we believe it to be of comparatively small importance amongst the numerous agents whereby terrestrial organic remains may be included in submarine strata.

CHAPTER XVI.

Imbedding of the remains of man and his works in subaqueous strata-Drifting of bodies to the sea by river-inundations-Destruction of bridges and housesBurial of human bodies in the sea- -Loss of lives by shipwreck-Circumstances under which human corpses may be preserved under a great thickness of recent deposits-Number of wrecked vessels-Durable character of many of their contents-Examples of fossil skeletons of men-Of fossil canoes, ships, and works of art Of the chemical changes which certain metallic instruments have undergone after long submergence-Effects of the subsidence of land in imbedding cities and forests in subaqueous strata-Earthquake of Cutch in 1819— Submarine forests—Berkley's arguments for the recent date of the creation of man-Concluding remarks.

We shall now proceed to inquire in what manner the mortal remains of man and the works of his

hands may be permaOf the

Of the many hundred in the course of every

nently preserved in subaqueous strata. million human beings which perish century on the land, every vestige is usually destroyed in the course of a few thousand years, but of the smaller number that perish in the waters, a considerable proportion must frequently be entombed, under such circumstances, that parts of them endure throughout entire geological epochs.

may

We have already seen how the bodies of men, together with those of the inferior animals, are occasionally washed down during river-inundations into seas and lakes, of which we shall now enumerate some additional examples.

Belzoni witnessed a flood on the Nile in September, 1818, where, although the river only rose three feet and a half above its ordinary level, several villages, with some hundreds of men, women, and children, were swept away *. We mentioned in a former volume that a rise of six feet of water in the Ganges in 1763, was attended with a much greater loss of lives. In the year 1771, at the time of the bursting of the Sol

* Narrative of Discovery in Egypt, &c. London, 1820.

way moss before alluded to, when the inundations in the north of England appear to have equalled the recent floods in Morayshire, a great number of houses and their inhabitants were swept away by the rivers Tyne, Can, Wear, Tees, and Greta; and no less than twenty-one bridges were destroyed in the courses of these rivers. At the village of Bywell the flood tore the dead bodies and coffins out of the churchyard, and bore them away, together with many of the living inhabitants. During the same tempest an immense number of cattle, horses, and sheep, were also transported to the sea, while the whole coast was covered with the wreck of ships. Four centuries before (in 1338), the same district had been visited by a similar continuance of heavy rains followed by disastrous floods, and it is not improbable that these catastrophes may recur periodically. As the population increases, and buildings and bridges are multiplied, we must expect that the loss of lives and property will rather augment *.

If to the hundreds of human bodies committed to the deep in the way of ordinary burial, we add those of individuals lost by shipwreck, we shall find that, in the course of a single year, a great number of human remains are consigned to the subaqueous regions. We shall hereafter advert to a calculation by which it appears that more than five hundred British vessels alone, averaging each a burden of about one hundred and twenty tons, are wrecked, and sink to the bottom, annually. Of these the crews for the most part escape, although it sometimes happens that all perish. In one great naval action several thousand individuals sometimes share a watery grave.

Many of these corpses are instantly devoured by predaceous fish, sometimes before they reach the bottom; still more frequently when they rise again to the surface and float in a state of putrefaction. Many decompose on the floor of the ocean where no sediment is thrown down upon them, but if they fall upon a reef where corals and shells are becoming agglutinated into a solid rock, or subside where the delta of a river is ad

* Scots Mag, vol. xxxiii. 1771.

vancing, they may be preserved for an incalculable series of ages in these deposits.

Often at the distance of a few hundred feet from a coral reef there are no soundings at the depth of many hundred fathoms Here if a ship strike and be wrecked, it may soon be covered by calcareous sand and fragments of coral detached by the breakers from the summit of a submarine mountain, and which may roll down to its base, Wrecks are known to have been common for centuries near certain reefs, so that canoes, merchant vessels, and ships of war may have sunk and have been enveloped in these situations in calcareous sand and breccia. Suppose a volcanic eruption to cover such remains with ashes and sand, and that over the tufaceous strata resulting from these ejections, a current of lava is afterwards. poured, the ships and human skeletons might then remain uninjured beneath the superincumbent rock, like the houses and works of art in the subterranean cities of Campania. That cases may have already occurred where human remains. have been thus preserved in a fossil state beneath masses more than a thousand feet in thickness, is by no means improbable, for in some volcanic archipelagos a period of thirty or forty centuries might well suffice for such an accumulation of

matter.

We stated that at the distance of about forty miles from the base of the delta of the Ganges, there is a circular space about fifteen miles in diameter where soundings of a thousand feet sometimes fail to reach the bottom. As during the flood season the quantity of mud and sand poured by the great rivers into the Bay of Bengal, is so great that the sea only recovers its transparency at the distance of sixty miles from the coast, this depression must be gradually shoaling, especially as during the monsoons the sea, loaded with mud and sand, is beaten back in that direction towards the delta. Now if a ship or human body sink down to the bottom in such a spot, it is by no means improbable that it may become buried under a depth of three or four thousand feet of sediment in the same number of years.

Even on that part of the floor of the ocean whither no accession of drift matter is carried, (a part which we believe to constitute, at any given period, by far the larger proportion of the whole submarine area,) there are circumstances accompanying a wreck which favour the conservation of skeletons. For when the vessel fills suddenly with water, especially in the night, many persons are drowned between decks and in their cabins, so that their bodies are prevented from rising again to the surface. The vessel often strikes upon an uneven bottom and is overturned, in which case the ballast consisting of sand, shingle, and rock, or the cargo, frequently composed of heavy and durable materials, may be thrown down upon the carcasses. In the case of ships of war, cannon, shot, and other warlike stores, may press down with their weight the timbers of the vessel when they decay, and beneath these and the metallic substances the bones of man may be preserved.

When we reflect on the number of curious monuments consigned to the bed of the ocean in the course of every naval war from the earliest times, our conceptions are greatly raised respecting the multiplicity of lasting memorials which man is leaving of his labours. During our last great struggle with France, thirty-two of our ships of the line went to the bottom in the space of twenty-two years, besides seven fiftygun ships, eighty-six frigates, and a multitude of smaller vessels. The navies of the other European powers, France, Holland, Spain, and Denmark, were almost annihilated during the same period, so that the aggregate of their losses must have many times exceeded that of Great Britain. In In every one of these ships were batteries of cannon constructed of iron or brass, whereof a great number had the dates and places of their manufacture inscribed upon them in letters cast in metal. In each there were coins of copper, silver, and often many of gold, capable of serving as valuable historical monuments; in each were an infinite variety of instruments of the arts of war and peace, many formed of materials, such as glass and earthenware, capable of lasting for indefinite ages