de pierre a chaux, ou les couches absolument regulieres, et qui ont peu d’epaisseur sur le schiste suivent parfaitement les contours du sommet.  Ces lits de pierre a chaux n’ont certainement pas ete souleves du fond de la mer sur le dos des schistes; lors meme qu’a cause de la grande inclinaison des feuillets de ceux-ci on voudroit le attribuer a quelque revolution telle que le soulevement; (ce que je n’admettrois point).  Car si ces lits calcaires, ayant ete faits au fond de la mer, avoyent ete souleves avec les schistes, ne feroient-ils pas brises et bouleverses comme eux?  Il est donc evident, que quoiqu’il soi arrive au schiste qui les porte, ces lits, et tous les autres de meme genre qui sont au haut de ces montagnes, ont ete deposees au niveau ou ils sont; et que par consequent la mer les surpassoit alors.  Ainsi le systeme de soulevement perd son but, s’il tend a expliquer pourquoi nous avons des couches, formees par la mer, qui se trouvent maintenant si fort au dessus de son niveau.  Il est evident que ces couches n’ont pas ete soulevees; mais que la mer s’est abaissee.  Or c’est la le grand point cosmologique a expliquer:  tous les autres, qui tiennent a la structure de certaines montagnes inintelligibles, n’appartiendront qu’a l’histoire naturelle, tant qu’ils ne se lieront pas avec celui-la.”

Here are two things to be considered; the interesting facts described by our author, and the inference that he would have us draw from those facts.  It would appear from the facts, that the body of schistus below, and that of lime-stone above, had not undergone the same disordering operations, or by no means in the same degree.  But our author has formed another conclusion; he says, that these lime-stone strata must have been formed precisely in the place and order in which they lie at present; and the reason for this is, because these strata appeared to him to follow perfectly the contour of the summit of this mountain.  Now, had there been in the top of this mountain a deep hollow encompassed about with the schistus rock; and had this cavity been now found filled with horizontal strata, there might have been some shadow of reason for supposing those strata to have been deposited upon the top of the mountain.  But to suppose, first, that shells and corals should be deposited upon the convex summit of a mountain which was then covered by the sea; secondly, that these moveable materials should remain upon the summit, while the sea had changed its place; and, lastly, that those shells and corals left by the sea upon the top of a mountain should become strata of solid limestone, and have also metallic veins in it, certainly holds of no principle of natural philosophy that I am acquainted with.  If, therefore, such an appearance as this were to be employed either in illustration or confirmation of a theory, it would itself require to be explained; but this is a task that this cosmologists does not seem willing to undertake.