60 THEORY OF THE EARTH, 



They suppose that every thing was originally fluid ; 

 that this universal fluid gave existence to animals, 

 which were at first of the simplest kind, such 

 as the monads and other infusory microscopic ani- 

 malcules ; that, in process of time, and by acquir- 

 ing different habits, the races of these animals be- 

 came complicated, and assumed that diversity of na- 

 ture and character in which they now exist. It is by 

 all those races of animals that the waters of the 

 ocean have been gradually converted into calca- 

 rious earth; while the vegetables, concerning 

 the origin and metamorphoses of which these au- 

 thors give us no account, have converted a part 

 of the same water into clay ; and these two earths, 

 after being stript of the peculiar characters they 

 had received respectively from animal and vege- 

 table life, are resolved by a final analysis into si- 

 lex : Hence the more ancient mountains are more 

 silicious than the rest. Thus, according to these 

 authors, all the solid particles of our globe owe 

 their existence to animal or vegetable life, and 

 without this our globe would still have continued 

 entirely liquid.* 



Other writers have preferred the ideas of Kep- 

 ler, and, like that great astronomer, have consid- 



* See La Physique de Rodig. p. 106. Leipsic, 1801, and Tellia- 

 med, p. 169. Lamark has expanded this system at great length, and 

 supported it with much sagacity, in his Hydrogeologie, and Philoso- 

 phic Zoologique. 



