The system of sustaining plants and animals upon a surface where fertility abounds, and where even the desert has its proper use, is to be perceived from the summit of the mountain to the shore within the region of the sea; and although we have principally taken the Alps, or alpine situations, for particular examples, in illustrating this operation of the waters upon the surface of the earth, it is because the effects are here more obvious to every inquirer, and not because there is here to be acknowledged any other principle than that which is to be found on all the surface of the earth, a principle of generation in one sense, and of destruction in another.

We may also find in this particular, a certain degree of confirmation to another part of the same theory; a part which does not come so immediately within our view, and concerning which so many contradictory hypotheses have been formed.  Naturalists have supposed a certain original construction of mountains, which constitution of things, however, they never have explained; they have also distinguished those which have evidently been formed in another manner, that is to say, those the materials of which had been collected in the ocean.  Now, here are two things perfectly different; on the one hand original mountains formed by nature, but we know not how, endued with solidity, but not differing in this respect from those of a posterior formation; on the other hand, secondary mountains, formed by the collection of materials in the sea, therefore, not having solidity as a quality inherent in their constitution, but only occasional or accidental in their nature.  If, therefore, it be the natural constitution of things upon the surface of this earth to indurate and become solid, however originally formed loose and incoherent, we should thus find an explanation of the consolidation of those masses which had been lately formed of the loose materials of the ocean; if, on the contrary, we find those pretended primitive mountains, those bodies which are endued with hardness and solidity, wasting by the hand of time, and thus wearing in the operations natural to the surface of the earth, Where shall we find the consolidating operations, those by which beds of shells have been transformed into perfect marble, and siliceous bodies into solid flint? or how reconcile those opposite intentions in the same cause?

Nothing can be more absurd than to suppose a collection of shells and corals, amassed about the primitive mountains of the earth, to become mountains equally solid with the others, upon the removal of the sea; it would be inconsistent with every principle of sound reasoning to suppose those masses of loose materials to oppose equal resistance to the wasting and destroying operations of the surface of the earth, as do those pretended primitive masses, which might be supposed endued with natural hardness and solidity; yet, consult the matter of fact, and it does not appear that there is any difference to be perceived.  There are lofty mountains to be found both of the one kind and the other; both those different masses yield to the wasting operations of the surface; and they are both carried away with the descending waters of the earth.