88 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



with regard to each place ; they thus envelope the small mounds of 

 earth on which they are formed. Many of these mounds have heen 

 covered within the memory of man. In other places the turf-bog 

 descends along the valleys ; it advances like the glaciers, but the 

 glaciers melt at the base, whilst the turf-bog is impeded by nothing, 

 By sounding it down to the solid soil, we judge of its antiquity; 

 and we find with turf-bogs as with downs, that they cannot have com - 

 menced at an indefinite and very remote epoch. It is the same with 

 slips, which are made with vast rapidity at the base of steep rocks, 

 and which are still very far from having covered them. But, as no 

 precise measurements have yet been applied to these two operations, 

 we shall not expatiate on them farther,* 



We see that wherever Nature addresses us, she always uses the 

 same language— every where informs us that the present state of things 

 has not commenced at a very remote period ; and what is not a little 

 singular, we hear everywhere echoes of the voice of Nature, whether 

 we consult the authentic traditions of nations, or examine their moral 

 and political condition, and the intellectual developement which they 

 had reached at the moment whence their authentic remains take date , 



The History of Nations Confirms the Newness of the Continents. 



Although, at the first glauce, the traditions of some ancient nations, 

 who extend their origin for so many thousand of years, may seem to 

 contradict very powerfully the newness of the present world, yet, when 

 we examine these traditions more carefully, we are not long in con- 

 cluding that they are not founded in history ; on the contrary, we 

 are soon convinced that the real history, and all that it has transmitted 

 to us of positive proofs of the early establishment of nations, confirms 

 what the natural records had declared. 



The chronology of none of the nations of the west can be traced ; un- 

 broken farther back than three thousand years. None of them can pro- 

 duce before this epoch, nor even for two or three centuries afterwards, 



* These phenomena are well discussed in the Letters of M. Deluc to the Queen of 

 England, where he treats of the turf- mosses of Westphalia; and in his letters to 

 Lametherie, inserted in the Journal de Physique of 1791, &c., as well as those ad- 

 dressed by him to M. Blumenbach, 1798. We may add the interesting details given 

 in his Geologic Voyage, vol. i., on the isles of the west coast of the duchy of Skswic, 

 and the manner of their union, either with themselves or with the continent, by al- 

 luvial deposites and turf-bogs ; as well as respecting the irruptions which have from 

 time to time destroyed or separated some of their parts. 



fe As to the slips, Mr. Jameson, in a note to his English translation of this Discourse, 

 cites a remarkable instance taken from the steep rocks near Edinburgh, called Salis- 

 bury Crags. Although of a trifling height, the abrupt and vertical face is not yet 

 concealed by the mass of debris accumulated at their feet, and which yet annually 

 increases. 



