but he speaks of the mutual attraction of the component particles of stone to each other; Will that fill the interstices between the coralline bodies with solid marble, as well as consolidate the coralline bodies themselves? or, if it should, How are those interstices to be thus filled with a substance perfectly different from the deposited bodies, which is also frequently the case?  But, how reason with a person who, with this consolidation of strata, confounds the well known operation by which the mortar, made with caustic lime and sand, becomes a hard body!  One would imagine that he were writing to people of the last age, and not to chemical philosophers who know so well how that mortar is concreted.

To my argument, That these porous strata are found consolidated with every different species of mineral substance, our author makes the following observation:  “Here the difficulties to the supposition of an aqueous solution are placed in the strongest light; yet it must be owned that they partly arise from the author’s own gratuitous supposition, that strata existed at the bottom of the sea previous to their consolidation;”—­gratuitous supposition!—­so far from being a supposition of any kind, it is a self evident proposition; the terms necessarily imply the conclusion.  I beg the readers attention for a moment to this part of our author’s animadversion, before proceeding to consider the whole; for, this is a point so essential in my theory, that if it be a gratuitous supposition, as is here asserted, it would certainly be in vain to attempt to build upon it the system of a world.

That strata may exist, whether at the bottom of the sea, or any other where, without being consolidated, will hardly be disputed; for, they are actually found consolidated in every different degree.  But, when strata are found consolidated, at what time is it that we are to suppose this event to have taken place, or this accident to have happened to them?—­Strata are formed at the bottom of water, by the subsidence or successive deposits of certain materials; it could not therefore be during their formation that such strata had been consolidated; consequently, we must necessarily conclude, without any degree of supposition, that strata had existed at the bottom of the sea previous to their consolidation, unless our author can show how they may have been consolidated previous to their existing.

This then is what our author has termed a gratuitous supposition of mine, and which, he adds, “is a circumstance which will not be allowed by the patrons of the aqueous origin of stony substances, as we have already seen.”—­I am perfectly at a loss to guess at what is here alluded to by having been already seen, unless it be that which I have already quoted, concerning things which have been never seen, that is, those interior parts of the earth which were originally a solid mass.—­I have hardly patience to answer such reasoning;—­a reasoning which is not founded upon any principle, which holds up nothing but chimera to our view, and which ends in nothing that is intelligible;—­but, others, perhaps, may see this dissertation of our author’s in a different light; therefore, it is my duty to analyse the argument, however insignificant it may seem to me.