Actions of Volcanoes. 268 
is singularly deficient in every thing requisite to explain the 
appearances for which it is invented to account; and that it 
cannot be reconciled to any thing that we know of the laws of 
nature. The angular and elevated positions of stratified rocks 
and most particularly where they contain large and weighty 
fragments, could not have been produced by any mode of depo- 
sition from water. Neither could their fractures and dislo- 
cations. The positions of shells of various kinds in them, are 
equally inexplicable in the same view. Thus, where tubular 
living shellfish are now found, it is observed that their posi- 
tions are always perpendicular to the horizon, and, conse- 
quently, to the stratum of sand which they inhabit. In a 
corresponding manner, empty concave shells must necessarily 
settle in water with their convexities downwards. Yet when the 
strata are found in elevated and angular positions, these shells 
retain that relation to the plane of the stratum which they had 
when under the water ; a sufficient proof of the displacement 
of these rocks. 
The same theory, in assuming a disappearance of water, 
which must amount in bulk, at least, to the measure. of the hol- 
low sphere contained between that sphere which is measured 
by the least diameter of the earth, supposing it to be spherical, 
and by the greatest, imagines a case which cannot have existed 
consistently with all that we know of chemistry, of astronomy? 
or of the nature of the earth. Such a mass of water could not 
be destroyed; nor are any receptacles to be found, or even 
imagined for it. But it is not necessary to say more on this 
subject. 
It remains to adopt some theory in which the land has been 
moved, or the rocks displaced, while the general mass of 
the ocean only changed its disposition in consequence of that 
motion. But, as it is not my intention to enter into the whole 
of this question, I shall merely state that the elevation of strata 
by an interior or subterranean force, must be admitted, at least 
to a share in these operations. The necessity of this is proved 
by a variety of phenomena which I cannot detail here. That 
such a force does exist, even now, is proved by the elevation 
