Cavern near Shakpoor.

28. In September 1816, Mr. Williams and Captain Maude, of the ship Favourite, having visited the site of the ancient city of Shahpoor, in the province of Fars (the ancient Parais) accompanied by Meer Shumsoodeen, a predatory chieftain, who from his plundering mode of life, had become well acquainted with the hidden recesses of the mountains, pointed out to their notice an extensive cavern containing a prostrate colossal figure.

The cave is distant from Shahpoor three miles, on the opposite side of the river. From the base of the mountain, near the summit of which the excavation is made, no traces of a cavern are discernible. The ascent is difficult, chiefly from its perpendicular height. When the travellers had nearly reached the top, they found themselves at the foot of an abrupt rampart, about thirty feet high, the depth of which, from its upper edge to the entrance of the cave to which it forms a level landing, was sixty feet. The entrance to the cavern is a plain, roughly hewn arch, three feet high, and thirty-five feet wide, beyond which the height increases to forty feet, and the width to sixty and seventy.

The figure, which is of stone, appears to have stood originally on a pedestal in the middle of this excavation, but was discovered lying on the ground, and the legs below the knees broken off. The costume appears to be similar to the sculptures at Shahpoor, Nukshi, Roostum, and Persepolis, and with the same luxuriant flow of curled hair. Its arms rest upon the hips, and the costume is a robe, fastened by a small button at the neck, and falling loosely over the elbows, and in this respect differs from the sculptures just mentioned. The length of the face from the forehead to the chin is two feet three inches, and the length of the body four feet and a half. According to this measurement the whole figure must have been about fourteen feet high. From the statue, to the most retired parts of the cavern, the excavation increases in height and width. After passing down an inclined plane, for about twenty feet, and up an ascent of about fifty feet more, the travellers reached a dry reservoir, seventeen feet by seven wide, and five feet deep. Farther on, they began to descend by torch light a low narrow passage in the rock, and reached another cavern, the roof of which was supported by a few huge shapeless pillars. The use or object of this excavation is not known.

SECTION VII.

CORALLINE STRUCTURES AND PETRIFACTIONS.

The arrangement of these subjects under one head is less material than the contrast they form, and the reflections to which they lead. On these grounds we have classed as first in this section

Zoophytic, or Coralline Structures.

29. M. de Perssonel of Marseilles, made some experiments on coral and other marine bodies. These bodies, which the Count de Marsigly imagined to be flowers, this ingenious naturalist disco vered to be insects, inhabiting the coral. M. Donati, of Turin, says, that coral is a mass of animals of the polype kind; and, instead of representing the polype beds and cells, which they contain, as the work of polypes, he thinks it more just to say, that coral and other coralline bodies, have the same relation to the polypes united to them, as there is between the shell of a snail and the snail itself; or the bones of an animal, and the animal itself. The same system has also been illustrated and established by Mr. Ellis.

The Red Sea, the Indian and Pacific Oceans, abound with coral. Throughout the whole range of the Polynesian and Australasian islands, there is scarcely a league of sea unoccupied by a coral reef or a coral island; the former springing up to the surface of the water from the fathomless bottom: and the latter, in various stages, from the low and naked rock, with the water rippling over it, to an uninterrupted forest of tall trees. I have seen," says Mr. Dalrymple, (in his Inquiry into the Formation of Islands,)" the coral banks in all their stages, some in deep water, others with a few rocks appearing above the surface, some just formed into islands, without the least appearance of vegetation; others, with a few weeds on the highest part; and, lastly, such as are covered with large timber, with a bottomless sea, at a pistolshot distance." In fact, as soon as the edge of the reef is high enough to lay hold of the floating sea wreck, or for a

bird to perch upon, the island may be said to commence. The dung of birds, feathers, wreck of all kinds, cocoa-nuts, floating with the young plant out of the shell, are the first rudiments of the new island. With islands thus formed, and others in the several stages of their progressive creation, Torres Strait is nearly choaked up; and Captain Flinders mentions one island in it covered with the casuarina, and a variety of other trees and shrubs, which give food to paroquets, pigeons, and other birds, to whose ancestors, it is probable, the island was originally indebted for this vegetation. The time will come, when New Holland, New Guinea, and all the little groups of islets and reefs to the north, and north-west of them, will either be united into one great continent, or be separated only with deep channels, in which the strength and velocity of the tide may obstruct the silent and unobserved agency of these insignificant labourers.

A barrier of coral reef runs along the whole of the eastern coast of New Holland; among which (says Captain Flinders,) we sought fourteen days, and sailed more than five hundred miles, before a passage could be found through them out to sea.

Supposing the sea were to change its bed, and to cover again the present continents (as it most probably will,) what great ranges of hills and mountains will then appear the work alone of diminutive insects! And, if the present islands and continents were once, for a series of ages, covered by the sea, (as the generality of the present geologists believe they were,) did these little polypes work in that sea! If they did, where are their works? Is it now lime-stone and chalk?

30. The chalk hills of Dorset have nearly the same appearance as would the coast of New Holland, were the sea to forsake its bed, and leave the foundation of the coral reefs dry, after the atmosphere and the rains had decomposed and pulverized their upper parts, and the debris had tumbled down their sides; and were the sea again to fill our vallies, ships would find no anchorage at a pistol-shot distance from the sides of our chalk hills, as is the case near the reefs of coral.

It cannot positively be said that chalk was formed by the coral insects; but many observations tend to inculcate that

belief. The chalk is incumbent on a stratum of sand-stone, full of shells, which was once the bottom of the sea, before the chalk was formed; the sand-stone rests on a bed of sand, with a few shells: a little above the sand-stone, in the chalk, we find cornua ammonis; and it was easy for them to find their way there, when the reef had just begun forming. Higher up in the chalk, few shells are found, and generally single specimens. A stratum of flints is generally found in chalk; but that may be accounted for by atoms of silica being at first mixed with the calcareous matter, and, in course of time, joined by the force of attraction,-as atoms with kindred atoms join. In the alluvial formation, on the banks of the Ohio, near Cincinnati, different species of coralline are found, generally calcareous, now and then siliceous: the siliceous matter must, therefore, have entered, and displaced the calcareous, whilst in a dissolved state. We frequently find shells inclosed in flints: the flinty matter must have been once in a soft state, as the flint exhibits the exact form of the shell which it surrounds. The lime-stone formation, on the banks of the Ohio, is thought to be the largest lime-stone formation in the world, it is likely to be also the work of the marine polype.

Formation of Strata at the Bottom of the Ocean.

31. Solid materials are successively created upon the bottom of the ocean, where they do not perish, but accumulate in extremely large quantities. An examination of the strata of this planet, made with tolerable attention, would discover them to amount at this time, to about 7,700 feet, which is little less than one mile and a half in thickness, measuring from the surface to the formation of the slate stratum only.

The upper layers of all strata are softer than those which lie below; the greater degree of infiltration and compression which the lower strata have undergone, has rendered them more compact and hard; and such parts of the layers as lie within the influence of the atmosphere are in a state of decomposition. Much of such strata as contain fragments of marine shells have the appearance of being formed, partly by a new creation, and partly by a

new arrangement of the old materials of land destroyed.

The then newly-created part is the natural produce of shell-fish and corals; the new arrangement is also the natural result of the cliffs along the coasts of all land being washed down, beat to pieces, and spread over the bottom of the ocean, the operation of spreading the earthy materials of former land over the bottom of the ocean, would generally put shell-fish to great inconvenience, and frequently bury some of them alive, when they would contribute towards the formation of new strata. These loose earthy materials, mixed with the shells of fish and corals, buried in vast numbers, both dead and alive, and in every state of comminution, would then be subjected to infiltration, and the natural compression of a continued augmentation of similar materials, as well as of super-imposed strata; all these things, continued for a very long time, have changed the loose materials into strata, and such seems to have been the origin of all marl, chalk, lime-stone, and even marble.

All strata contain proofs in abundance that their creation took place in a very slow and gradual manner, whereof the lowest layer of slate is bedded upon either quartz or granite, and all the rest have been added in succession; stratum super stratum, from the quartz or granite upwards to the surface. A very considerable proportion of these strata have unquestionably been created by the inhabitants of the ocean, though it must be admitted that some of the local strata (coals for instance) have had a vegetable origin; but the ocean has had the most important share in arranging these things.

Our knowledge of the structure of this planet is mostly confined to what we discover by an examination of its strata; and these prove that, with the exception of coal, they are generally a marine production. Of this any person may satisfy himself, who will undertake the trouble of examining them in their natural situation, and view the specimens of mineralogy in the several museums, for in these places, the proofs are before us. The strata of this planet have been examined from the surface downwards to the depth of about two miles, and the whole of that depth consists of stratum super stratum; and they show, in a way which cannot be controverted, that they have been formed one after another, successively, from a great depth to the surface; or, in other