This Fact Appears To Me
Highly Remarkable; For The Explanation Generally Given By
Geologists, Of The Absence In Any District
Of stratified
fossiliferous deposits of a given period, namely, that the
surface then existed as dry land, is not here
Applicable; for we
know from the shells strewed on the surface and embedded
in loose sand or mould that the land for thousands of miles
along both coasts has lately been submerged. The explanation,
no doubt, must be sought in the fact, that the whole
southern part of the continent has been for a long time
slowly rising; and therefore that all matter deposited along
shore in shallow water, must have been soon brought up
and slowly exposed to the wearing action of the sea-beach;
and it is only in comparatively shallow water that the greater
number of marine organic beings can flourish, and in such
water it is obviously impossible that strata of any great
thickness can accumulate. To show the vast power of the
wearing action of sea-beaches, we need only appeal to the
great cliffs along the present coast of Patagonia, and to the
escarpments or ancient sea-cliffs at different levels, one
above another, on that same line of coast.
The old underlying tertiary formation at Coquimbo,
appears to be of about the same age with several deposits
on the coast of Chile (of which that of Navedad is the
principal one), and with the great formation of Patagonia.
Both at Navedad and in Patagonia there is evidence, that
since the shells (a list of which has been seen by Professor
E. Forbes) there entombed were living, there has been a
subsidence of several hundred feet, as well as an ensuing
elevation.
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