It would appear that it is a rare thing to find a great extent of indurated strata in a horizontal position.  Now, this circumstance is necessary in affording the appearances here considered; those particular appearances, therefore, are only to be found more partially in other places, where the strata are inclined.  If here, therefore, where the strata are horizontal, and where the spaces between the summits of those mountains had evidently been as solid as the masses which remain, we find mountains formed by the waste of land, and a system of rivers forming valleys amidst these mountains, Have we not reason to conclude, that in other mountainous regions, where the regular position of the strata has been broken and confounded, and where the same system of river and valley universally is found, the form of the surface has been produced upon no other principle than that of the natural waste of the solid mass, and the washing down of the heights for the formation of the fertile plains?

Nothing can tend more to illustrate the Theory than a proper comparison of the Old World with that which is called the New.  It is not that we are to expect to see the operation of a longer time, upon the one of those continents, compared with the other; we equally lose all measure of time, in tracing the operations of nature on either continent.  But in those operations there is rule to be observed; and the question is, If the same order of things may be perceived in all the quarters of the globe?

This is a question which the learned, even, in their closet, may be able to decide.  They have but to look at the maps to be convinced that every where the process of nature, in forming habitable countries, is uniform; and that the system of what is called the watering those countries with rivers, is universally the same; a system which is now considered as giving us a view of the operations of water wearing down the land which it has fertilized, and shaping the surface of the earth so as to make it on the whole most useful.

There cannot be a doubt of the effects of those natural operations which belong to the surface of the earth, and which affect more powerfully the surfaces of the mountains; the only question is with regard to the general amount of those operations, and to the particular occasions which may have concurred in producing those effects.  These questions can only be resolved in making particular observations.  A general theory may thus be formed, of those operations by which the surface of the earth above the level of the sea has been changed, and will continue to be so as long as it remains a surface exposed to the influence of those agents which must be acknowledged in this place.