not reason to conclude,
that in other mountainous regions, where the regular position of the
strata has been broken and confounded, and where the same system of
river and valley universally is found, the form of the surface has been
produced upon no other principle than that of the natural waste of the
solid mass, and the washing down of the heights for the formation of the
fertile plains?

Nothing can tend more to illustrate the Theory than a proper comparison
of the Old World with that which is called the New. It is not that we
are to expect to see the operation of a longer time, upon the one of
those continents, compared with the other; we equally lose all measure
of time, in tracing the operations of nature on either continent. But in
those operations there is rule to be observed; and the question is, If
the same order of things may be perceived in all the quarters of the
globe?

This is a question which the learned, even, in their closet, may be able
to decide. They have but to look at the maps to be convinced that every
where the process of nature, in forming habitable countries, is uniform;
and that the system of what is called the watering those countries with
rivers, is universally the same; a system which is now considered as
giving us a view of the operations of water wearing down the land which
it has fertilized, and shaping the surface of the earth so as to make it
on the whole most useful.

There cannot be a doubt of the effects of those natural operations which
belong to the surface of the earth, and which affect more powerfully
the surfaces of the mountains; the only question is with regard to the
general amount of those operations, and to the particular occasions
which may have concurred in producing those effects. These questions can
only be resolved in making particular observations. A general theory may
thus be formed, of those operations by which the surface of the earth
above the level of the sea has been changed, and will continue to be so
as long as it remains a surface exposed to the influence of those agents
which must be acknowledged in this place.

Naturalists, who have examined the various parts of the earth, almost
all agree in this, that great effects have been produced by water moving
upon the surface of the earth; but they often differ with respect to the
cause of that motion, and also as to the time or manner in which the
effect is brought about. Some suppose great catastrophes to