[Footnote] **[The 'polishing slate' of Bilin is stated by M. Ehrenberg to
form a 'series' of strata fourteen feet in thickness, entirely made up of
the siliceous shells of 'Gaillonellae', of such extreme minuteness that a
cubic inch of the stone contains forty-one thousand millions! The
'Bergmehl' ('mountain meal' or 'fossil farina') of San Fiora, in Tuscany, is
one mass of animalculites. See the interesting work of G. A. Mantell, 'On
the Medals of Creation', vol. i., p. 233.] -- Tr.
An intimate acquaintance with the physical phenomena of the universe leads
us to regard the products of warm latitudes that are thus found in a fossil
condition in northern regions not merely as incentives to barren curiosity,
but as subjects awakening deep reflection, and opening new sources of study.
The number and the variety of the objects I have alluded to give rise to the
question whether general considerations of physical phenomena can be made
sufficiently clear to persons who have not acquired a detailed and special
knowledge of
p 47
descriptive natural history, geology, or mathematical astronomy? I think we
ought to distinguish here between him whose task it is to collect the
individual details of various observations, and study the mutual relations
existing among them, and him to whom these relations are to be revealed,
under the form of general results.
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