The shell as the animal's house; leaves preserved in stone
How the shellfish builds and grows its shell, and how a viscous humour fossilises leaves in layered rock
Two paragraphs of text, with a small shell drawn in the right margin. The first compares the shellfish to a builder, describing how the animal makes its shell with joints, seams and lids, growing it by grades with its body and attaching itself by muscles so it can withdraw and close up. The second explains that when nature makes stone it produces a viscous humour that congeals whatever it encloses without turning it to stone, so that whole leaves, mixed with various kinds and left by autumn floods, are preserved inside layered rock formed grade by grade from the mud.
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The shellfish builds its house like a man
The animal that dwells in the shell makes its dwelling with joints, seams, lids and other small parts, as a man builds his house, and grows house and lid by grades as its body grows. It attaches itself along the sides of the shell, where the inner smoothness is left somewhat spotted and roughly concave, apt to receive the junction of the muscles by which the animal draws itself in to shut the house.
A viscous humour that preserves whole leaves in layered stone
When nature generates stones it makes a viscous humour that, on drying, congeals whatever is enclosed in it, keeping it in the form found rather than turning it to stone. Thus whole leaves of various kinds, left by autumn river floods and covered by later inundations, are found inside stones at the roots of the mountains, the mud binding with the humour and converting into stone layered grade by grade.