It is the singularity of these horizontal strata in that extensive alpine mass, which seems to have engaged M. de Saussure, who has inspected so much of those instructive countries, to make a tour around those mountains, and to give us a particular description of this interesting place.  Now, from this description, it is evident, that there is an immense mass of primary or alpine strata nearly in the horizontal position, which is common to all the strata at their original formation; that this horizontal mass had been raised into the highest place of land upon this globe; and that, in this high situation, it has suffered the greatest degradation, in being wasted by the hand of time, or operations of the elements employed in forming soil for plants, and procuring fertility for the use of animals.  Here is nothing but a truth that may almost every where be perceived; but here that important truth is to be perceived on so great a scale, as to enable us to enlarge our ideas with regard to the natural operations of this earth, and to overcome those prejudices which contracted views of nature, and magnified opinions of the experience of man may have begotten,—­prejudices that are apt to make us shut our eyes against the cleared light of reason.

Abundant more examples of this kind, were it necessary, might be given, both from this very good observator, and from M. de Luc[23].

[Footnote 23:  Vid.  Discours sur l’Histoire Naturelle de la Suisse, passim; but more particularly under the article of Route du Grindle wald a meiringen dans le pays de Hasti: Also Hist:  de la Terre, Lettre 30. p. 45, et Lettre 31. page 68, etc.]

I will now only mention one from this last author, which we find in the Journal de Physique, Juin 1792.

“Entre Francfort et Hanau, le mein est borde sur ses deux rives, de collines dans lesquelles la lave se trouve enchassee entre des couches calcaires.  Ces couches sont tres-remarquables par leur contenue, qui est le meme au-dessus et au-dessous de la lave, et qu’on retrouve dans les couches d’une grande etendue de pays, ou, comme d’ordinaire, on voit leurs sections abruptes dans les flancs de collines, mais sans lave, excepte dans le lieu indique.”

The particular structure of those lime-stone strata, with the body of basaltes or subterraneous lava which is interposed among them, shows evidently the former connection of those two banks of the river, by solid matter, the same as that which we see left there, and in the flanks of those hills.  That which is wanting, therefore, of those stratified masses, in that great extent of country, marks out to us the minimum of what has been lost, in having been worn by the attrition of travelled materials.

I would now beg leave, for a moment, to transport my reader to the other side of the Atlantic, in order to perceive if the same system of rivers wearing mountains is to be found in that new world, as we have found it in the old.