ntains, certain characters depending
upon the species of substances or rocks of which they are composed, and
the general manner in which those masses are wasted by the operations of
the surface. Thus there is some character in the external appearance
of a hill, a mountain, or a ridge of hills and mountains; but this
appearance is generally attended with various circumstances, or is so
complicated in its nature, as to be always difficult to read; and it is
but seldom that it affords any very particular information; although,
after knowing all the state and circumstances of the case, I have always
found the appearances most intelligible, and strictly corresponding
with the general principle of atmospheric influence acting upon the
particular structure of the earth below.

M. de Saussure has given us an observation of this kind, in describing
the mountains through which the Rhone has made its way out of the Alps,
at the bottom of the Vallee.

"Sec.. 1061. Plus loin le village de _Juviana_ ou Envionne on voit des
rochers qui ont une forme que je nomme _moutonnee_; car on est tente
de donner des noms a des modifications qui n'en ont pas, et qui ont
pourtant un caractere propre. Les montagnes que je designe par cette
expression sont composees d'un assemblage de tetes arrondies, couvertes
quelquefois de bois, mais plus souvent d'herbes, ou tout au plus de
brousailles. Ces rondeurs contigues et repetees forment en grand l'effet
d'une toison bien fournie, ou de ces perruques que l'on nomme aussi
_moutonnees_. Les montagnes qui se presentent sous cette forme, sont
presque toujours de rochers primitives, ou au moins des steatites; car
je n'ai jamais vu aucune montagne de pierre a chaux ou d'ardoise revetir
cette apparence. Les signes qui peuvent donner quelque indice de la
nature des montagnes, a de grandes distances et au travers des plantes
qui le couvrent, sont en petit nombre, et meritent d'etre etudies et
consacres par des termes propres."

When philosophers propose vague theories of the earth, theories which
contain no principle for investigating either the general disorder of
strata or the particular form of mountains, such theories can receive no
confirmation from the examination of the earth, nor can they afford any
rule by which the phenomena in question might be explained. This is not
the case when a theory presents both the efficient and final cause of
those disorders in bodies which had been originally formed regula