admit, that nature must have hollowed out of the solid rock all those
pyramidal mountains, and a system of inclined valleys carrying the ice
from the summits.

Let us now reason from our principles, in order to see how far the
present appearances of things would naturally result from those wasting
causes acting upon a mass of granite, of a given basis and of sufficient
height, during a space of time which is unlimited.

We are to suppose our mass of granite without any structure except that
of the veins and cutters, formed by the contraction of the solid mass
in cooling. Now, those separations will naturally give direction to the
operation of the wasting causes, whether we consider these as chymical
or mechanical. Hollow tracts would thus be formed in the solid mass; in
those hollow ways would flow the water, carrying the detached portions
of the rock; and those hard materials, by their attrition upon the solid
mass, would more and more increase the channels in which they move. Thus
there would be early formed a system of valleys in this rock, and among
those valleys a number of central points, or summits over which no
running water would carry hard materials to operate upon the solid rock
over which it flows.

Here therefore, in the nature of things, is placed the rudiments of our
needles, those colossal pyramids which acquire height gradually as the
valleys widen, and whose _apices_ may arrive at an angle of a certain
degree of acuteness. But what a waste of rock to have formed all those
needles which we find rising from the icy valleys round Mount Blanc!

Upon the supposition that this had been the origin of those pyramidal
mountains, it must be evident, that there is a _ne plus ultra_ of
acuteness to which the _apex_ of a pyramid would in time arrive; and
that then the decaying summit would tumble by the lump alternately, and
regain the acuteness of its point. Now, if this be the case, although
we cannot see the process, which is too slow for human observation, we
should actually find them in all the stages of this progress. But this
is precisely the state in which the summits of those mountains are to be
found. M. de Saussure gives a view of one of those pyramids, which will
serve to illustrate this subject in the most perfect manner. It is from
the Montanvert that this object is to be perceived. (Voyages dans les
Alpes, vol. 2.).

These high peaks of solid rock demonstrate the manner in which those
enormous