Natural History, X 6 S 



tliese mountains contained neither strata of shells, 

 ?ior any organized fossils; but by means of sub- 

 terranean conflagrations, earthquakes, and volca- 

 noes, these substances were thrown up, in con- 

 fused heaps, after which they successively subsided 

 according to their different specific gravities, and 

 thereby necessarily disposed themselves in different 

 strata. He also maintained that these submarine 

 eruptions, while they threw up huge and irregular 

 masses of matter, also ingulphed marine plants 

 and animals of every kind, which subsided in like 

 manner, and thus formed new mountains, and new 

 beds of stones, sand, metals, and other minerals, 

 intermingled with the remains of vegetable and 

 animal bodies, all which remained under the sea 

 till some new agitation threw them above its sur- 

 face. He supposed that the waters by which the 

 earth was originally overflown subsided by de- 

 grees, the dry land first appearing in places adja- 

 cent to that where the first man and animals were 

 placed at the creation; that the land extended it- 

 self gradually, a considerable time elapsing before 

 the waters had returned into their proper bed, 

 during which time the shell-fish, multiplying in 

 great abundance, were universally distributed by 

 the waters of the sea; aiKi that when the bottom 

 of the ocean was raised up by the earthquakes 

 that accompanied the deluge, and formed the 

 mountains, whole beds of such shells were thrown 

 up, and distributed as we now behold them. 



About the year 1744 M. Le Cat, a philoso- 

 pher of France, proposed a theory of the earth 

 diflcring from all which had preceded it. Ac- 

 cording to him, in the beginning, the substance 

 whence metals, stones, earths, and other mineral 

 bodies were to be formed, was a soft mass, con- 

 sisting of a kind of mud. The earth was a globe, 

 or regular spheroid, axid its surface was uniform 



