260 Hutton according to Plaijfa'ir. 



nature, are things to which hardly any man would be insensible ; 

 but to him they were a matter not of transient delight, but of 

 solid and permanent happiness. Few systems, indeed, were 

 better calculated than his, to entertain their author with such 

 noble and magnificent prospects ; and no author was ever more 

 disposed to consider the enjoyment of them as the full and ade- 

 quate reward of his labours. 



Hutton'ian Theory of the Earth, according' to Play fair. — 

 I. The object of Dr Hutton was not, like that of most other 

 theorists, to explain the first origin of things. He was too well 

 skilled in the rules of sound philosophy for such an attempt ; 

 and he accordingly confined his speculations to those changes 

 which terrestrial bodies have undergone since the establishment 

 of the present order, in as far as distinct marks of such changes 

 are now to be discovered. 



With this view, the first fact which he has remarked is, that 

 by far the greater part of the bodies which compose the exterior 

 crust of our globe^ bear the marks of being formed out of the 

 materials of mineral or organized bodies of more ancient date. 

 The spoils or the wreck of an older world are everywhere visi- 

 ble in the present, and though not found in every piece of rock, 

 they are diffused so generally as to leave no doubt that the 

 strata which now compose our continents are all formed out of 

 strata more ancient than themselves. 



II. The present rocks, with the exceptions of such as are not 

 stratified, having all existed in the ibrm of loose materials coU 

 lected at the bottom of the sea, must have been consolidated and 

 converted into stone by virtue of some very powerful and gene- 

 ral agent. The consolidating cause which he points out is sub- 

 terraneous heat ; and he has removed the objection to this hypo- 

 thesis by the introduction of a principle new and peculiar to 

 himself. This principle is the compression which must have 

 prevailed in that region where the consolidation of mineral sub^ 

 stances was accomplished. Under the weight of a superincum- 

 bent ocean, heat, however intense, might be unable to volatilize 

 any part of those substances which at the surface, and under 

 the lighter pressure of our atmosphere, it can entirely consume. 

 The same pressure, by forcing these substances to remain united, 



