But though I cannot find in those interesting descriptions which we now have got, any one which is demonstrative of this truth, that calcareous marine objects are found in the primitive strata, this is not the case with regard to another object equally important in deciding this question, Whether the primitive strata are found containing the marks of organised bodies?

M. de Dellancourt, in his Observations Mineralogiques, Journal de Physique Juillet 1786, in describing the mountains of Dauphine, gives us the following fact with regard to those alpine vertical strata.

“La pierre constituante de la montagne d’Oris est en general le Kneifs ou la roche feuilletee mica et quartz a couches plus ou moins ferrees quelquefois le schorl en roche penetre de steatite.  Les couches varient infiniment quant a leur direction et a leur inclinaisons.  Cette montagne est cultivee et riche dans certain cantons, surtout autour du village d’Oris, mais elle est tres-escarpee dans beaucoup d’autres.  Entre le village d’Oris et celui du Tresnay est une espece de combe assez creuse formee par la chute des eaux des cimes superieures des rochers.  Cette combe offre beaucoup de schiste dont les couches font ou tres-inclinees ou perpendiculaires.  Entre ces couches il s’en est trouve de plus noires que les autres et capable de bruler, mais difficilement.  Les habitans ont extrait beaucoup de cette matiere terreuse, et lui ont donne le nom de charbon de terre.  Ils viennent meme a bout de la faire bruler, et de s’en servir l’hiver en la melant avec du bois.  Ce schiste noir particulier m’a paru exister principalement dans les endroits ou les eaux se sont infiltrees entre les couches perpendiculaires, et y ont entraine diverse matieres, et sur-tout des debris de vegetaux que j’ai encore retrouves a demi-noirs, pulverulens et comme dans un etat charbonneux.”

This formation of coal, by the infiltration of water and carrying in of vegetable bodies, certainly cannot be admitted of; consequently, from this description, there would seem to be strata of coal alternated with the alpine schisti.  But the formation of mineral coal requires vegetable matter to have been deposited along with those earthy substances, at the bottom of the sea.  The production of vegetable bodies, again, requires the constitution of sea and land, and the system of a living world, sustaining plants at least, if not animals.

In this natural history of the alpine schisti, therefore, we have a most interesting fact, an example which is extremely rare.  Seldom are calcareous organised bodies found among those alpine strata, but still more rarely, I believe, are the marks of vegetable bodies having contributed in the formation of those masses.  But however rare this example, it is equally decisive of the question, Whether the alpine schisti have had a similar origin as the other strata of the globe, in which are found abundance of animal and vegetable bodies, or their relics? and we are authorised to say, that since those perfect alpine strata of Dauphine have had that origin, all the alpine schisti of the globe have been originally formed in a similar manner.  But to put this matter out of doubt: