} 70 .Nafurat Ilistoiy, 



parts of the earth were suspended hi one getters! 

 undivided mass, " without form and void." These 

 parts were endued with a variety of prineiples or 

 laws of elective attractions, though equally and 

 universally governed by the same law of gravita- 

 tion. They were heterogeneous; and by their 

 attraction progressively formed a habitable world. 

 As the component parts of the chaos successively- 

 separated, the sea universally prevailed over the 

 earth; and this would have continued to be the 

 case had it not been for the sun and moon, which 

 were coeval with the earth, and by their attractive 

 influence interfered with the regular subsiding of 

 the solid matter, which was going on. As the 

 separation of the solids and fluids increased, the 

 former were moved from place to place, without 

 regularity; and hence the sea became unequally 

 deep. These inequalities daily becoming greater, 

 in process of time, dry land was formed, and di- 

 vided the sea ; islands gradually appeared, like 

 sand banks above the water, and at length be- 

 came firm, dry, and fit for the reception of the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms. He supposed 

 that mountains and continents were not primary 

 productions of nature, but of a very distant period 

 from the creation ; that they are the effects of sub- 

 terranean fires and commotions, and were produced 

 when the strata of the earth had acquired their 

 greatest degree of firmness and cohesion, and when 

 the testaceous matter had assumed a stony hard- 

 ness. And, finally, that the marine shells found 

 in various places, on and below the surface of the 

 earth, were, for the most part, generated, lived, 

 and died in the places in which they are found; 

 that they were not brought from distant regions as 

 some have supposed; .and, consequently, that these 

 beds of shells, ZiQ. were originally the bottom of 

 the ocean V 



