[Footnote 71: Phil. Trans. vol. l. p. 688. CAMPER denies that the remains here mentioned belong to the crocodile, or any amphibious animal, and refers them to the balænaæ. He passes the same judgment on those fossil bones from St Peter's Mount, near Maestricht, which have been supposed to belong to the crocodile; he looks on them as belonging to whales, though of an unknown species. In this Mount, so famous for its petrifactions, he finds many specimens of bones, which he thinks belong to the turtle. Phil. Trans. vol lxxvi. p. 443. The opinion of an author, so well skilled in comparative anatomy, must be regarded as of great weight: if it takes from our argument in one part, it adds to it in another, and the acquisition of the turtle makes up abundantly for the loss of the crocodile.] On this subject I cannot help observing, that the accurate comparison of the animal exuviæ of the mineral kingdom, with their living archetypes, is not merely a curious inquiry, but is one that may lead to important consequences, concerning the nature and direction of the forces which have changed, and are continually changing, the surface of the earth. 161. These remarks I have thought it proper to add to the proofs of the composition of the present from former strata, in order to show, that the great transportation of materials involved in that supposition, is not only conformable to the hypothesis of the Neptunists concerning the secondary strata, but is also proved by the most direct evidence, independently of all hypothesis. All this reasoning regards the ancient state of the globe. Whether such a travelling of stony bodies makes a part of the system now actually carrying on, will be considered in another place.[72] [Footnote 72: See NOTE XIX.] NOTE VI. § 13. _Mr Kirwan's notion of precipitation._ 162. The Neptunist who has provided the means of dissolving the materials of the strata, has only performed half his work, and must find it a task of equal difficulty to force this powerful menstruum to part with its solution. Mr Kirwan, aware in some degree of this difficulty, has attempted to obviate it in a very singular way. First, he ascribes the solution of all substances in water, or in what he calls the chaotic fluid, to their being finely pulverised, or created in a state of the most minute division. Next, as to the deposition, the solvent being, as he acknowledges, very insufficient in quantity, the precipitation took place, (he says,) on that account the more rapidly.