166 ON THE REVOLUTIONS 



cording to my view of Dr Hutton's Theory ; and had. this 

 event come to his knowledge, which happened in his day, it 

 might have induced him to admit the probability of those sud- 

 den elevations, indicated by so many facts. 



The process of elevation, whether performed gently or 

 rapidly, is free from a difficulty to which the systems of 

 both Saussure and Werner are exposed : both of these geo- 

 logists conceive that our continents and rocky districts were 

 once covered with water, which has since flowed away, 

 these rocks maintaining their original position ; now, to 

 lay a rock bare in this manner, we must dispose not only of 

 the water which covered the immediate mass of rock, but also 

 of that body of the same fluid which occupied an equal level 

 all over the globe. This difficulty was strongly felt by Professor 

 Pallas, who says, [Observations sur la Formation des Montagues, 

 p. 79.), that were the summits of the mountains supposed to 

 have been covered, the mass of water required to equal and 

 surmount them round all the globe could not be disposed 

 of within the earth, even were its inside made up of ca- 

 verns : On that account, he denies that the summit of the 

 hills has been covered. He burdens himself, however, with a 

 very considerable share of the same difficulty, by supposing 

 that the sea had stood at such a level as to submerge hills of 

 100 fathoms high. 



According to our theory, there is no such embarrassment. 

 We suppose these low hills, as well as the high ones, to have 

 been raised from the bottom of the sea, which need not be 

 considered as ever having stood above its present level. And 

 I think myself authorised by the facts stated in the course 

 of this paper, in deviating so far from the Huttonian hypo- 

 thesis, as to believe that the elevation of the land was per- 

 formed. 



