Theory of the Earth

BUT even allowing that, by the changed axis of the earth, or any other operation of the globe, as a planetary body revolving in the solar system, great continents of land could have been erected from the place of their formation, the bottom of the sea, and placed in a higher elevation, compared with the surface of that water, yet such a continent as this could not have continued stationary for many thousand years; nor could a continent of this kind have presented to us, every where within its body, masses of consolidated marble and other mineral substances, in a state as different as possible from that in which they were, when originally collected together in the sea.

CONSEQUENTLY, besides an operation, by which the earth at the bottom of the sea should be converted into an elevated land, or placed high above the level of the ocean, there is required, in the operations of the globe, a consolidating power by which the loose materials that had subsided from water should be formed into masses of the most perfect solidity, having neither water nor vacuity between their various constituent parts, nor in the pores of those constituent parts themselves.

HERE is an operation of the globe, whether chemical or mechanical, which is necessarily connected with the formation of our present continents: Therefore, had we a proper understanding of this secret operation, we might thereby be enabled to form an opinion, with regard to the nature of that unknown power, by which the continents have been placed above the surface of that water wherein they had their birth.

IF this consolidating operation be performed at the bottom of the ocean, or under great depths of the earth, of which our continents are composed, we cannot be witnesses to this mineral process, or acquire the knowledge of natural causes, but immediately observing the changes which they produce; but though we have not this immediate observation of those changes of bodies, we have, in science, the means of reasoning from

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