produced ly the Mellon of the Ocean. 14 1 



The monstrous opinion that all minerals and their beds have 

 been forced up from below, and in their ascent have pro- 

 duced the enormous dispartations of rock wherein we now 

 find them, is rapidly declining ; and the rational and far 

 more natural conclusion, that all minerals and their hetero- 

 geneous matrices have arrived at their situations bv a de- 

 scending process, is daily establishing itself; and it can be 

 maintained on no other reasoning than that the separatiois 

 in the strata were originally land fissures, clefts, rocky val- 

 leys, and other excavations, such as all countries now n)ore 

 or less abound with ; and that they were tilled up with di- 

 versified materials in a subsequent inmiersion. In fact 

 numbers of these fissures bear palpable indication of a stra- 

 tified form in their contents; and those sparry and other in- 

 crustations which are so usually found adhering, in many 

 distinct layers over each other, to the rocky sides of mines, 

 and which have been deemed certain proofs of actual fusion, 

 are, on the contrary, the most decisive evidence of an aque- 

 ous process down the |)erpendicular side of the rock, the 

 distinct lavers of different materials concreting and passing 

 over each other in regular succession. 



Perhaps the most irrefragable proofs of the distinct im- 

 mersions of the same country are to be found in those sin- 

 gular instances, sufficiently frequent, of the formation of 

 secondary horizontal strata over vertical strata of primary 

 granite and schistus. 



This rectangular formation of strata contains in iiselfa 

 physical impossibility, as to its being the produce of a sinc^le 

 immersion. 



Other proofs of separate submersions of the same country 

 are to be found in the extensive beds of sand and pebbles', 

 whose present situation can only be referred to former shores 

 of the ocean. All granular sand and loose stone are de- 

 rived from the detritus of rock, the desiccated strata of 

 former marine deposition ; and all pebbles have acquired 

 their smooth and rounded forms from the attrition of agi- 

 tated water in the streams of rivers or on the shores of the 

 sea. Immense beds of such sand and pebbles are found in 

 every varying situation, from the lops of the highest moun- 

 tains to the bottoms of the lowest valleys, either in loose 

 masses, or in vast formations of pudding-stone and breccias, 

 which arc merely the indurated beds of sand and intermixed 

 pebbles. Now if we trace these nun)erous and extensive 

 beds from the first marine precipitation of the maicrials, 

 through the subsequent desiccation of the strata, the afier 



disintejjratioii 



