MODERN GEOLOGY 



this unique view ours is indeed a world without be- 

 ginning and without end; its continents have been 

 making and unmaking in endless series since time 

 began. 



Hutton formulated his hypothesis while yet a young 

 man, not long after the middle of the century. He 

 first gave it publicity in 1781, in a paper before the 

 Royal Society of Edinburgh: 



"A solid body of land could not have answered the 

 purpose of a habitable world," said Hutton, " for a soil 

 is necessary to the growth of plants, and a soil is noth- 

 ing but the material collected from the destruction of 

 the solid land. Therefore the surface of this land in- 

 habited by man, and covered by plants and animals, is 

 made by nature to decay, in dissolving from that hard 

 and compact state in which it is found ; and this soil is 

 necessarily washed away by the continual circulation 

 of the water running from the summits of the moun- 

 tains towards the general receptacle of that fluid. 



"The heights of our land are thus levelled with our 

 shores, our fertile plains are formed from the ruins of 

 the mountains; and those travelling materials are still 

 pursued by the moving water, and propelled along the 

 inclined surface of the earth. These movable materials, 

 delivered into the sea, cannot, for a long continuance, 

 rest upon the shore, for by the agitation of the winds, 

 the tides, and the currents every movable thing is 

 carried farther and farther along the shelving bottom 

 of the sea, towards the unfathomable regions of the 

 ocean. 



"If the vegetable soil is thus constantly removed 

 from the surface of the land, and if its place is then to 



121 



