levation of our land. It is not uncommon to find this gravel
twenty or thirty feet deep; and masses are found of much greater
thickness. Were these masses of gravel formed in a deep hollow place,
they would draw to no conclusion beyond the appearance itself; but they
are, on the contrary, in form of hills; and therefore they serve as a
kind of measure or indication of what had been carried away when these
were left remaining.

We may observe a series or a progress in those forming and destroying
operations, by which, on the one hand, the flinty bodies, already formed
in the mineral region, were again destroyed, in being diminished by
their mutual attrition; and, on the other hand, those diminished bodies
were again consolidated into one mass of flinty stone, without the
smallest pore or interstice. This example is to be found in the
puddingstone of England. It consists of flint pebbles, precisely like
Kensington gravel, penetrated or perfectly consolidated by a flinty
substance. Here are the two opposite processes of the globe carried
on at the same time and nearly in the same place. But it must be
considered, that our land was then in the state of emerging from the
sea, and those operations of subterranean fire fit for elevating land
was then no doubt exerted with great energy; at present, no such thing
appears in this place. But, from the momentary views we have of things,
it would be most unphilosophical to draw such absolute conclusions.

The argument now employed rests upon the identity of the substance of
the gravel with that of the entire flint, which is found in the chalk
country; and it goes to prove that the sea had worn away a great deal of
that chalk country above the place upon which this body of gravel is now
resting; consequently that the sea had formerly flowed over that
country covered with gravel, and had dispersed much of that gravel in
transporting it to other regions, where that species of flint was not
naturally produced. By a parity of reasoning, the gravel produced in
the neighbouring regions, and which would be proper to those places,
as consisting of their peculiar productions, must have been likewise
dispersed and mixed with the surrounding bodies of gravel. But as in the
country of which we are now treating, there are considerable regions,
the different productions of which are perfectly distinct, we have a
proper opportunity of bringing those conclusions of the theory to the
test of observa