here are to be found any marks of certain
parts of our earth having more than once undergone that change of
posture, or vicissitude of things, and of having had reiterated
operations of the mineral kingdom changing their substance, as well as
altering their positions in relation to the atmosphere and sea.

Besides the gradual decay of solid land, exposed to the silent
influences of the atmosphere, and to the violent operations of the
waters moving upon the surface of the earth, there is a more sudden
destruction that may be supposed to happen sometimes to our continents
of land. In order to see this, it must be considered, that the
continents of our earth are only raised above the level of the sea by
the expansion of matter, placed below that land, and rarified in that
place: We may thus consider our land as placed upon pillars, which may
break, and thus restore the ancient situation of things when this land
had been originally collected at the bottom of the ocean. It is not here
inquired by what mechanism this operation is to be performed; it is
certainly by the exertion of a subterranean power that the land is
elevated from the place in which it had been formed; and nothing is more
natural than to suppose the supports of the land in time to fail, or be
destroyed in the course of mineral operations which are to us unknown.
In that case, whatever were remaining of that land, which had for
millions of ages past sustained plants and animals, would again be
placed at the bottom of the sea; and strata of every different species
might be deposited again upon that mass, which, from an atmospheric
situation, is now supposed to be lower than the surface of the sea.

Such a compound mass might be again resuscitated, or restored with the
new superincumbent strata, consolidated in their texture and inclined in
their position. In that case, the inferior mass must have undergone a
double course of mineral changes and displacement; consequently, the
effect of subterranean heat or fusion must be more apparent in this
mass, and the marks of its original formation more and more obliterated.

If, in examining our land, we shall find a mass of matter which had been
evidently formed originally in the ordinary manner of stratification,
but which is now extremely distorted in its structure, and displaced in
its position,--which is also extremely consolidated in its mass, and
variously changed in its composition,--which therefore has the mar