course of things, or judge of those operations, by which a world,
so wisely ordered, goes into decay; and to learn, by what means such a
decayed world may be renovated, or the waste of habitable land upon the
globe repaired.

This, therefore, is the object which we are to have in view during this
physical investigation; this is the end to which are to be directed all
the steps in our cosmological pursuit.

The solid parts of the globe are, in general, composed of sand, of
gravel, of argillaceous and calcareous strata, or of the various
compositions of these with some other substances, which it is not
necessary now to mention. Sand is separated and sized by streams and
currents; gravel is formed by the mutual attrition of stones agitated
in water; and marly, or argillaceous strata, have been collected, by
subsiding in water with which those earthy substances had been floated.
Thus, so far as the earth is formed of these materials, that solid body
would appear to have been the production of water, winds, and tides.

But that which renders the original of our land clear and evident,
is the immense quantities of calcareous bodies which had belonged
to animals, and the intimate connection of these masses of animal
production with the other strata of the land. For it is to be proved,
that all these calcareous bodies, from the collection of which the
strata were formed, have belonged to the sea, and were produced in it.

We find the marks of marine animals in the most solid parts of the
earth; consequently, those solid parts have been formed after the ocean
was inhabited by those animals which are proper to that fluid medium.
If, therefore, we knew the natural history of those solid parts, and
could trace the operations of the globe, by which they had been formed,
we would have some means for computing the time through which those
species of animals have continued to live. But how shall we describe a
process which nobody has seen performed, and of which no written
history gives any account? This is only to be investigated, _first_, in
examining the nature of those solid bodies, the history of which we want
to know; and, 2_dly_, In examining the natural operations of the globe,
in order to see if there now actually exist such operations, as, from
the nature of the solid bodies, appear to have been necessary to their
formation.

But, before entering more particularly into those points of discussion,
by which the question i