On the one hand, the subsiding of the surface of the ocean would but make the former land appear the higher; and, on the other, the sinking the body of the former land into the solid globe, so as to swallow up the greater part of the ocean after it, if not a natural impossibility, would be at least a superfluous exertion of the power of nature.  Such an operation as this would discover as little wisdom in the end elected, as in the means appropriated to that end; for, if the land be not wasted and worn away in the natural operations of the globe, Why make such a convulsion in the world in order to renew the land?  If, again, the land naturally decays, Why employ so extraordinary a power, in order to hide a former continent of land, and puzzle man?

Let us now consider how far the other proposition, of strata being elevated by the power of heat above the level of the sea, may be confirmed from the examination of natural appearances.

The strata formed at the bottom of the ocean are necessarily horizontal in their position, or nearly so, and continuous in their horizontal direction or extent.  They may change, and gradually assume the nature of each other, so far as concerns the materials of which they are formed; but there cannot be any sudden change, fracture, or displacement, naturally in the body of a stratum.  But, if these strata are cemented by the heat of fusion, and erected with an expansive power acting below, we may expect to find every species of fracture, dislocation, and contortion, in those bodies, and every degree of departure from a horizontal towards a vertical position.

The strata of the globe are actually found in every possible position:  For, from horizontal, they are frequently found vertical; from continuous, they are broken and separated in every possible direction; and, from a plane, they are bent and doubled.  It is impossible that they could have originally been formed, by the known laws of nature, in their present state and position; and the power that has been necessarily required for their change, has not been inferior to that which might have been required for their elevation from the place in which they had been formed.

In this cafe, natural appearances are not anomalous.  They are, indeed, infinitely various, as they ought to be, according to the rule; but all those varieties in appearances conspire to prove one general truth, viz.  That all which we see had been originally composed according to certain principles, established in the constitution of the terraqueous globe; and that those regular compositions had been afterwards greatly changed by the operations of another power, which had introduced apparent confusion among things first formed in order and by rule.

It is concerning the operation of this second power that we are now inquiring; and here the apparent irregularity and disorder of the mineral regions are as instructive, with regard to what had been transacted in a former period of time, as the order and regularity of those same regions are conclusive, in relation to the place in which a former state of things had produced that which, in its changed state, we now perceive.