STUDY IV. 157 



But if the pretended centrifugal force had, once, 

 the power of heaving up mountains, why does it 

 not poflefs, at this day, the power of tofling up a 

 ilraw into the air ? It ought not to leave a fingle 

 detached body on the fur face of the Earth. They 

 are affixed to it, I fliall be told, by the centripetal 

 force, or gravity. But if this laft power, in fadl, 

 forces every body toward ir, why have not the 

 mountains too fubmitted to this univerfal law, 

 when they were in a ftatc of fufion? I cannot con- 

 ceive what reply can be made to this twofold ob- 

 jedion. 



The Sea appears, to me, not more adapted to 

 the formation of mountains, than the centrifugal 

 force is. How is it poflible to imagine the pofli- 

 bility of it's having thrown them out of it's womb? 

 It is incontrovertible, however, that marbles, and 

 calcareous ftones, which are only paftes of madre- 

 pores and of fhells amalgamated; that flints, which 

 are concretions of thefe -, that marles, which are 

 a dilTolution of them ; and that all marine bodies, 

 which are found in every part of both Continents, 

 have iflued out of the Sea. Thefe matters ferve 

 as a bafis to great part of Europe ; hills of a very 

 confiderable height are compofed of them, and 

 they are found in many parts of both the Old and 

 New Worlds, at an equal degree of elevation. 

 But their ftrata cannot be explained by any of the 



aduai 



