"Fossil Shells" is a bit of filler; one of the few works on fossils for early American children, it's a "gee-whiz" paragraph that doesn't try to explain why a bed of shells found in France is also found in the Andes. Like other early pieces on fossils printed in Parley's Magazine, the explanation likely would have fit the explanation of the Earth's beginnings to be found in the bible.
FOSSIL SHELLS (from Parley's Magazine, June 7, 1834, p. 111)
At the distance of 100 miles from the sea, in France, is a bed of shells, 2 miles long, and twenty feet in depth. Humboldt found the shells on the Andes, 14,120 feet above the level of the sea.