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These proofs of a more elevated temperature seem to imply the higher antiquity of the faluns as compared with the Suffolk Crag, and are in perfect accordance with the fact of the smaller proportion of testacea of recent species found in the faluns.
Searles Wood first described the marine testacea of the Crags, the additions made to that fossil fauna have not been considerable, whereas we have made in the same period immense progress in our knowledge of the living testacea of the British and arctic seas, and of the Mediterranean.
Here, therefore, we have proof that the transport of erratics continued to take place, not merely when the sea was inhabited by the existing Testacea, but when the north of Europe had already assumed that remarkable feature of its physical geography, which separates the Baltic from the North Sea, and causes the Gulf of Bothnia to have only one-fourth of the saltness belonging to the ocean.
That date, it will be seen, is very remote if compared to the times of history and tradition, yet very modern if contrasted with the length of time during which all the living testacea, and even many of the mammalia, have inhabited the globe.
Small streams, therefore, occasional land- floods, and those winds which drift clouds of sand along the deserts, might carry down into the Red Sea the same shells of fluviatile and land testacea which the Nile is sweeping into its delta, together with some remains of terrestrial plants and the bones of quadrupeds, whereby the groups of strata before alluded to might, notwithstanding the discrepancy of their mineral composition and MARINE organic fossils, be shown to have belonged to the same epoch.
That they are found in beds of gravel, sand, and clay, which have never been artificially disturbed. "Third. That they occur associated with the remains of land, fresh-water, and marine testacea, of species now living, and most of them still common in the same neighborhood, and also with the remains of various mammalia a few species now living, but more of extinct forms. "Fourth.
Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised sands and clays consists exclusively of existing northern species of testacea, it is more than probable that they may not all belong to that division of the Pleistocene strata which we are now considering. On the contrary, they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna.
Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence.
Here, therefore, we have proof that the transport of erratics continued to take place, not merely when the sea was inhabited by the existing testacea, but when the north of Europe had already assumed that remarkable feature of its physical geography which separates the Baltic from the North Sea, and causes the Gulf of Bothnia to have only one- fourth of the saltness belonging to the ocean.
Among them was the Helix barbula, an Asturian species, Helix pauperata, and Bulimus variatus, Madeiran or Canarian forms. A considerable number of marine and terrestrial Testacea were procured at Rio de Janeiro, not a few of them new and of great interest. Terebratula rosea was dredged off Rio in thirteen fathoms water, on a coarse sandy bottom.
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