44 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



Diversities of all the Systems. 



According to one system, every thing has been 

 successively precipitated by crystallization, and 

 deposited nearly as it exists at present ; but the 

 sea, which covered all, has gradually retired *. 



According to another, the materials of which 

 the mountains consist, are incessantly worn down 

 and carried off by the rivers to be deposited at 

 the bottom of the sea, where they are heated un- 

 der an enormous pressure, and form strata, which 

 are one day to be violently lifted up by the heat 

 which consolidates them f. 



A third supposes the fluid divided into a mul- 

 titude of lakes, placed, like the seats of an am- 

 phitheatre, above each other, which, after having 

 deposited our shelly strata, have successively bro- 

 ken their dikes, to descend and fill the basin of 

 the ocean \. 



According to a fourth, tides of seven or eight 

 hundred fathoms depth have carried off, from time 

 to time, the matter lying at the bottom of the sea, 



* Delametherie, in his " Geologic/' admits crystalliza- 

 tion as the principal agent. 



t Hutton and Play fair. Illustrations of the Huttonian 

 Theory of the Earth. Edin. 1802. 



i Lamanon, in various parts of the Journal de Phy- 

 sique, after Michaelis, and several others. 



