take place in the cavities of the earth above the level of the sea, and
where the influence of the atmosphere were felt; and yet this is the
very place which we have it in our power to examine, and where, besides
the stalactite, and one or two more of the same kind, or formed on the
same principle, they have never been able to discover one of the many
which, according to their theory, ought always to be in action or
effect. So far from knowing that general consolidating operation, which
they suppose to be exerted in filling up the veins and cavities of the
earth by means of the infiltrating water of the surface, they do not
seem fully to understand the only operation of this kind which they see.
The concretion of calcareous matter upon the surface of the earth is
perhaps the only example upon which their theory is founded; and
yet nothing can be more against it than the general history of this
transaction.

Calcareous matter, the great _vinculum_ of many mineral bodies, is in
a perpetual state of dissolution and decay, in every place where the
influences of air and water may pervade. The general tendency of this
is to dissolve calcareous matter out of the earth, and deliver that
solution into the sea. Were it possible to deny that truth, the
very formation of stalactite, that operation which has bewildered
naturalists, would prove it; for it is upon the general solubility of
calcareous matter exposed to water that those cavities are formed, in
which may be found such collections of stalactical concretion; and the
general tendency of those operations is to waste the calcareous bodies
through which water percolates. But how is the general petrifaction or
consolidation of strata, below the surface of the sea, to be explained
by the general dissolution of that consolidating substance in the
earth above that level? Instead of finding a general petrifying or
consolidating operation in the part of the earth which we are able to
examine, we find the contrary operation, so far at least as relates to
calcareous spar, and many other mineral bodies which are decomposed and
dissolved upon the surface of the earth.

Thus in the surface of the earth, above the level of the sea, no
petrifying operation of a durable nature is found; and, were such an
operation there found, it could not be general, as affecting every kind
of substance. But, even suppose that such a general operation were found
to take place in the earth above the level