20 HisTOitv or 



waters ; and in proportion as they lilled, the face of the earth 

 became once more visible. . The higher parts of its broken sur- 

 *kce, now become the tops of mountains, were the first that ap- 

 peared ; the plains soon after came forward, and, at length, the 

 whole globe was delivered from the waters, except the places 

 ill the lowest situations ; so that the ocean and the seas are still 

 a part of the ancient abyss, that have not had a place to return 

 I.-ilands and rocks are fragments of the earth's former crust; 

 kingdoms and continents are larger masses of its broken sub- 

 stance ; and all the inequalities that are to be found on the sur- 

 face of the present earth, are owing to the accidental confusion 

 into which both earth and waters were then thrown." 



The next theorist was "Woodward, who, in his Essay towards 

 a Natural History of the Earth, which was only designed to 

 precede a greater work, has endeavoured to give a more rational 

 account of its appearances ; and was, in fact, much better fur- 

 nished for such an undertaking than any of his predecessors, 

 being one of the most assiduous naturalists of his time. His 

 little book, therefore, contains many important facts, relative to 

 natural history, although his system may be weak and groundless. 



He begins by asserting that all terrene substances are disposed 

 in beds of various natures, lying horizontally one over the other, 

 Bomewhat like the coats of an onion ; that they are replete with 

 shells, and other productions of the sea ; these shells being found 

 in the deepest cavities, and on the tops of the highest mountains. 

 From these observations, which are warranted by experience, 

 he proceeds to observe, that these shells and extraneous fossils 

 are not productions of the earth, but are all actual remains of 

 those animals which they are known to resemble ; that all the 

 beds of the earth lie under each other, in the order of their spe- 

 cific gravity ; and that they are disposed as if they had been left 

 there by subsiding waters. All these assertions he affirms with 

 much earnestness, although daily experience contradicts him in 

 some of them ; particularly we find layers of stone often over 

 the lightest soils, and the softest earth under the hardest bodies. 

 However, having taken it for granted, that all the layers of the 

 earth are found in the order of their specific gravity, the lightest 

 at the top, and the heaviest next the centre, he consequently 

 asserts, and it will not improbably follow, that all the substances 

 ol which the earth is composed, were once in an actual state at 



