In all quarries these shells form a share of the internal part of the stone, sometimes externally covered with stalactites, which is much less ancient matter than stone, which contains shells. Another proof this happened not by a deluge is, that bones, horns, claws, &c. of land animals, are found but very rarely, and not at all in marble and other hard stone whereas if it was the effect of a deluge, where all must have perished, we should meet with the remains of land animals as well as those of the sea. It is a vain supposition to pretend that all the earth was dissolved at the deluge, nor can we give any foundation to such idea, but by supposing a second miracle, to give the water the property of a universal dissolvent. Besides, what annihilates the supposition, and renders it even contradictory, is, that if all matters were dissolved by that water, yet shells have not been so, since we find them entire and well preserved in all the masses which are said to have been dissolved; this evidently proves that there never was such dissolution, and that the arrangement of the parallel strata was not made in an instant, but by successive sediments: for it is evident to all who will take the trouble of observing, that the arrangement of all the materials which compose the globe, is the work of the waters. The question therefore is only whether this arrangement was made at once, or in a length of time: now we have shewn it could not be done all at once, because the materials have not kept the order of specific weight, and there has not been a general dissolution; therefore this arrangement must have been produced by sediments deposited in succession of time; any other revolution, motion, or cause, would have produced a very different arrangement. Besides, particular revolutions, or accidental causes, could not have produced a similar effect on the whole globe. Let us see what the historian of the Academy says on this subject anno 1718, p. 3. "The numerous remains of extensive inundations, and the manner in which we must conceive mountains to have been formed, sufficiently proves that great revolutions have happened to the surface of the earth. As far as we have been able to penetrate we find little else but ruins, wrecks, and vast bodies heaped up together and incorporated into one mass, without the smallest appearance of order or design. If there is some kind of regular organization in the terrestrial globe it is deeper than we have been able to examine, and all our researches must terminate in digging among the ruins of the external coat, but which will still find sufficient employment for our philosophers.