uniformity observable
in the effects; and there will be general laws, by which this operation
must have been conducted. Therefore, knowing those general laws, and
making just observations with regard to the natural appearances of those
consolidated masses, a philosopher, in his closet, should be able to
determine, what may, and what may not have been transacted in the bowels
of the earth, or below the bottom of the ocean.

Let us now endeavour to ascertain what may have been the power of water,
acting under fixed circumstances, operating upon known substances, and
conducting to a certain end.

The action of water upon all different substances is an operation
with which we are familiar. We have it in our power to apply water in
different degrees of heat for the solution of bodies, and under various
degrees of compression; consequently, there is no reason to conclude
any thing mysterious in the operations of the globe, which are to be
performed by means of water, unless an immense compressing power should
alter the nature of those operations. But compression alters the
relation of evaporation only with regard to heat, or it changes the
degree of heat which water may be made to sustain; consequently, we are
to look for no occult quality in water acting upon bodies at the bottom
of the deepest ocean, more than what can be observed in experiments
which we have it in our power to try.

With regard again to the effect of time: Though the continuance of time
may do much in those operations which are extremely slow, where no
change, to our observation, had appeared to take place, yet, where it
is not in the nature of things to produce the change in question, the
unlimited course of time would be no more effectual, than the moment by
which we measure events in our observations.

Water being the general medium in which bodies collected at the bottom
of the sea are always contained, if those masses of collected matter are
to be consolidated by solution, it must be by the dissolution of
those bodies in that water as a menstruum, and by the concretion or
crystallization of this dissolved matter, that the spaces, first
occupied by water in those masses, are afterwards to be filled with a
hard and solid substance; but without some other power, by which the
water contained in those cavities and endless labyrinths of the strata,
should be separated in proportion as it had performed its task, it is
inconceivable how those masses, how