The general amount of our reasoning is this, that nine-tenths, perhaps, or ninety-nine hundredths of this earth, so far as we see, have been formed by natural operations of the globe, in collecting loose materials, and depositing them at the bottom of the sea; consolidating those collections in various degrees, and either elevating those consolidated masses above the level on which they were formed, or lowering the level of that sea.

There is a part of the solid earth which we may at present neglect, not as being persuaded that this part may not also be found to come under the general rule of formation with the rest, but as considering this part to be of no consequence in forming a general rule, which shall comprehend almost the whole, without doing it absolutely.  This excluded part consists of certain mountains and masses of granite.  These are thought to be still older in their formation, and are said never to be found superincumbent on strata which must be acknowledged as the productions of the sea.

Having thus found the greater part, if not the whole, of the solid land to have been originally composed at the bottom of the sea, we may now, in order to form a proper idea of these operations, suppose the whole of this seaborn land to be again dispersed along the bottom of the ocean, the surface of which would rise proportionally over the globe.  We would thus have a spheroid of water, with granite rocks and islands scattered here and there.  But this would not be the world which we inhabit; therefore, the question now is, how such continents, as we actually have upon the globe, could be erected above the level of the sea.

It must be evident, that no motion of the sea, caused by this earth revolving in the solar system, could bring about that end; for let us suppose the axis of the earth to be changed from the present poles, and placed in the equinoctial line, the consequence of this might, indeed, be the formation of a continent of land about each new pole, from whence the sea would run towards the new equator; but all the rest of the globe would remain an ocean.  Some new points might be discovered, and others, which before appeared above the surface of the sea, would be sunk by the rising of the water; but, on the whole, land could only be gained substantially at the poles.  Such a supposition, as this, if applied to the present state of things, would be destitute of every support, as being incapable of explaining what appears.

But even allowing that, by the changed axis of the earth, or any other operation of the globe, as a planetary body revolving in the solar system, great continents of land could have been erected from the place of their formation, the bottom of the sea, and placed in a higher elevation, compared with the surface of that water, yet such a continent as this could not have continued stationary for many thousand years; nor could a continent of this kind have presented to us, every where within its body, masses of consolidated marble, and other mineral substances, in a state as different as possible from that in which they were, when originally collected together in the sea.