neralise those facts and observations, and to bring them in
confirmation of a theory which is necessarily founded upon the decaying
nature and perishing state of all that appears to us above the surface
of the sea.

Nothing is more evident, than that the general effect of mineral
operations is to consolidate that which had been in an incoherent state
when formed at the bottom of the sea, and thus to produce those rocks
and indurated bodies which constitute the basis of our vegetable soil;
but, that indurating or consolidating operation is not the immediate
object of our observation; and, to see the evidence of that operation,
or the nature of that cause, requires a long chain of reasoning from the
most extensive physical principles. Our present subject of investigation
requires no such abstract distant _media_, by which the effect is to be
connected with its cause; the actual operation in general is the object
of our immediate observation; and here we have only to reason from
less to more, and not to homologate things which may, to men of narrow
principles, appear to be of different kinds. But even here we find
difficulty in persuading those who have taken unjust views of things;
for, those who will not deny the truth of every step in this chain of
reasoning, will deny the end to which it leads, merely because they
are not disposed to admit the progress of that order which appears in
nature.

In the last chapter, I have been using arguments to prove that M. de
Luc has reasoned erroneously, in concluding the future stability of a
continent; and I have been endeavouring to show that our continent
is necessarily wasted in procuring food to plants, or in serving the
various purposes of a system of living animals. We have now in view to
illustrate this theory of the degradation of the surface of the earth;
a theory necessarily leading to that system of the world in which a
provision is made for future continents; and a theory explaining various
natural appearances which otherwise are not to be understood. A door may
thus be opened for the investigation of natural history, particularly
that which traces back, from the present state of things, those
operations of nature which are more immediately connected with what we
take much pleasure to behold, viz. the surface of the earth stored with
such a variety of beautiful plants, and inhabited by such a diversity of
animals, all subservient to the use of man.

There are two ways