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unreasonable, to deny the truth of the statement, that the 
sea must once have covered these rocks. No sooner do we 
become aware of this fact than we may discover that we 
have lifted but one of the veils which conceal from us the 
simplicity of nature. 
To know a bare fact is in itself interesting ; but to trace 
effects to their ultimate cause, or rather to trace a succession 
of effects, may lead us to perceive some of those wondrous 
laws by which the machinery of the universe is regulated. 
In the present inquiry we will start from the acknowledged 
phenomenon that mountains now several thousand feet above 
the sea level, were once beneath it ; and we will direct 
attention to the successive steps by which this result has 
been attained. First, it is granted that a mountain, now 
thousands of feet high, was once beneath the sea. It follows 
then that either the mountain must have risen, or the ocean 
must have decreased and passed away since. 
It is now so generally known to all those interested in 
geology, that facts prove that the mountains have been raised, 
that we need not here enter into the proofs of this part of 
the subject, but will advance to the next step in the inquiry. 
It is found that not only are there mountains which were 
once beneath the sea, but that there is land which is now 
considerably beneath the level of the sea, and which was 
once above it, and that submergences and emergences 
must have occurred repeatedly. The alternate beds of coal, 
sandstone, and shale, most clearly prove this change from 
land to water. The first conclusion to which this fact 
might lead us would be, that the same land had been forced 
upwards from the centre of the earth, and had then sunk, 
and so on, and thus that the change of water and land had 
been produced by a process of oscillation. 
To reach truth by means of inquiry, it is absolutely 
necessary, in the absence of direct evidence, to consider by 
