It is not meant to specify every particular in the means employed by nature for the elevation of our land.  It is sufficient to have shown, that there is, in nature, means employed for the consolidating of strata, formed originally of loose and incoherent materials; and that those same means have also been employed in changing the place and situation of those strata.  But how describe an operation which man cannot have any opportunity of perceiving?  Or how imagine that, for which, perhaps, there are not proper data to be found?  We only know, that the land is raised by a power which has for principle subterraneous heat; but, how that land is preserved in its elevated station, is a subject in which we have not even the means to form conjecture; at least, we ought to be cautious how we indulge conjecture in a subject where no means occur for trying that which is but supposition.

We now proceed, from the facts which have been properly established, to reason with regard to the duration of this globe, or the general view of its operations, as a living world, maintaining plants and animals.

SECTION IV.

System of Decay and Renovation observed in the Earth.

Philosophers observing an apparent disorder and confusion in the solid parts of this globe, have been led to conclude, that there formerly existed a more regular and uniform state, in the constitution of this earth; that there had happened some destructive change; and that the original structure of the earth had been broken and disturbed by some violent operation, whether natural, or from a super-natural cause.  Now, all these appearances, from which conclusions of this kind have been formed, find the most perfect explanation in the theory which we have been endeavouring to establish; for they are the facts from whence we have reasoned, in discovering the nature and constitution of this earth:  Therefore, there is no occasion for having recourse to any unnatural supposition of evil, to any destructive accident in nature, or to the agency of any preternatural cause, in explaining that which actually appears.

It is necessary for a living or inhabited world, that this should consist of land and water.  It is also necessary, that the land should be solid and stable, refilling, with great power, the violent efforts of the ocean; and, at the same time, that this solid land should be resolved by the influence of the sun and atmosphere, so as to decay, and thus become a soil for vegetation.  But these general intentions are perfectly fulfilled in the constitution of our earth, which has been now investigated.  This great body being formed of different mixed masses, having various degrees of hardness and solubility, proper soil for plants is supplied from the gradual resolution of the solid parts; fertility in those soils arises from the mixture of different elementary substances; and stability is procured to that vegetable world, by the induration of certain bodies, those rocks and stones, which protect the softer masses of clay and soil.