"M. de Jussieu found in the environs of St. Chaumont a great quantity of slaty or foliated stones, every foliage of which was marked with the impression of a branch, a leaf, or the fragment of a leaf of some plant: the representations of leaves were exactly extended, as if they had been carefully spread on the stone by the hand; this proves they had been brought thither by the water, which always keeps leaves in that state: they were in different situations, sometimes two or three together. It may easily be supposed that a leaf deposited by water upon soft mud, and afterwards covered with another layer of mud, imprints on the upper the image of one of its two surfaces, and on the under the image of the other; and on being hardened and petrified would appear to have taken different impressions; but, however natural this supposition may be, the fact is not so, for the two laminæ of stone bear impressions of the same side of the leaf, the one in alto, the other in bas releaf. It was M. Jussieu who made these observations on the figured stones of St. Chaumont; to him we shall leave the explication, and pass to objects which are more general and interesting. "All the impressions on the stones of St. Chaumont are of foreign plants; they are not to be found in any part of France, but only in the East Indies or the hot climates of America; they are for the most part capillary plants, generally of the species of fern, whose hard and compact coat renders them more able to imprint and preserve themselves. Some leaves of Indian plants imprinted on the stones of Germany appeared astonishing to M. Leibnitz, but here we find the same wonderful affair infinitely multiplied. There even seems in this respect to be an unaccountable destination of nature, for in all the stones of St. Chaumont not a single plant of the country has been found. "It is certain, by the number of fossil-shells in the quarries and mountains, that this country, as well as many others, must have formerly been covered with the sea. But how has the American or Indian sea reached thither? To explain this, and many other wonderful phenomena, it may be supposed, with much probability, that the sea originally covered the whole terrestrial globe: but this supposition will not hold good, because how were terrestrial plants to exist? It evidently, therefore, must have been great inundations which have conveyed the plants of one country into the others.