198 Preface to “* The Natural History 
sidence under the waters of a former ocean, from the decay of and 
waste of a former earth, carried down to the sea by land-floods. 
2d. ‘That these submarine rocks and strata were heated to the 
degree of fiision by subterranéous fire, while immersed under the 
waters of the ovean, by which heat and fusion the lax and porous 
Sedimeiit was consolidated, perfectly cemented, and all the pores 
and cavities filled up by the melted matter, while the whole mass 
Was in a state of fusion. 
3d. That the rocks and strata, so formed and consolidated 
under the waters of the ocean, were afterwards inflated and forced 
up from under water by the expansive poiver of the subterraneous 
fire, to the height of our habitable earth; atid of the loftiest 
mountains upon the surface of the globe. 
4th. That thése operations of nature, viz. the decay and waste 
of the old land, the forming and consolidation of new land under 
the waters of the ocean, arid the change of the strata now form- 
ing under water to future diy Jand, is a progressive work of na- 
ture, which always did, and always will gd on in a perpetual 
succession, forming world after world. 
I. The first of these propositions has been fully answered and 
refuted before it was written, at least before it was published, in 
my examination of the system of Count Buffon in his Theory 
of the Earth, which will be found in the second volume of my 
Essays upon thé Mineral Kingdoms, concerning which, I will 
venture to say, and the candid intelligent naturalist will say with 
me, that I have not left the Doctor so much as a particle of 
earthy matter to form one of his future worlds, if a single parti- 
cle would save the whole succession. 
I have now effectually cut off all his supplies, and appropriated 
them to a better use ; and I hope it will be acknowledged, that 
I have made a good use of them. There is little or no differenee 
between Count Buffon and Dr. Hutton in this part of their se- 
veral theories; and therefore, what I have advanced concerning 
Buffon’s, is equally applicable to the Doctor’s. 
I have, in my examination of Count Buffon’s Theory, frankly 
acknowledged the truth of almost all that the Count and the 
Doctor advance about the weathering, décoinposition, aid waste 
of the superficies of many of ovr rocks and strata, and of our 
mountains and cavernous shores, 
The spoils of the mountains aré carriéd down by land-floods 
to the valleys and to the borders of the oceati. So far we go to- 
gether ;—but here we must part, a8 I positively deny that any 
Strata are formed under the waters of the ocean. I have, in 
that part of my essays, rnadé it evident to a demonstration, that 
the sea purges itsel. by the tides of all the earthy matter ee 
own 
