“Telles font les pensees que ces observations nouvelles m’inspirerent en 1774.  On verra dans le IVe. volume comment douze ou treize ans d’observations et de reflections continuelles sur ce meme sujet auront modifie ce premier germe de mes conjectures; je n’en parle ici qu’historiquement, et pour faire voir qu’elles sont les premieres idees que le grande spectacle du Cramont doit naturellement faire eclore dans une tete qui n’a encore epouse aucun systeme.”

How far these appearances, which had suggested to this philosopher those ideas, agree with or confirm the present theory, which had been founded upon other observations, is here submitted to the learned.

We have now not only found a cause corresponding to that which can alone be conceived as producing this evident deplacement of bodies formed horizontally at the bottom of the sea, but we have also found that this same cause has operated every where upon those strata, in consolidating by means of fusion the porous texture of their masses.  Now when the evidence of those two facts are united, we cannot refuse to admit, as a part of the general system of the earth, that which is every where to be observed, although not every where to such advantage as in those regular appearances, which our author has now described from those alpine regions.

I have only one more example to give concerning this great region of the Alps belonging to Savoy and Switzerland.  It is from the author of Les Tableaux de la Suisse.

[3] “On s’embarque a Fluelen a une demi-lieue d’Altorf sur le lac des quatre Waldstoett ou cantons forestiers; les bords de ce lac sont des rochers souvent a pic et d’une tres grande elevation et la profondeur de ses eaux proportionnee.  Ces roches sont toutes calcaires, et souvent remarquables par la position singuliere de leurs couches.  A une demi-lieue environ de Fluelen, sur la droite, des couches de six pouces environ d’epaisseur sont deposees en zig-zags comme une tapisserie de point-d’hongrie; a une lieue et demie a cote de couches bien horizontales, de quatre a cinq pieds d’epaisseur il y en a de contournees de forme circulaire et d’elliptiques.  Il seroit difficile de se faire une idee de la formation de pareilles couches, et d’expliquer comment les eaux ont pu les deposer ainsi.”

[Footnote 3:  Discours sur l’Hist.  Nat. de la Suisse, page CLV.]

Having thus given a view of a large tract of country where the strata are indurated or consolidated and extremely elevated, without the least appearance of subterraneous fire or volcanic productions, it will now be proper to compare with this another tract of country, where the strata, though not erected to that extreme degree, have nevertheless been evidently elevated, and, which is principally to the present purpose, are superincumbent upon immense beds of basaltes or subterranean lava.  This mineral view is now to be taken from M. de Luc, Lettres Phisiques et Morales, Tom. 4.