The enormous ravages produced by earthquakes have made some naturalists think that mountains and other inequalities of the surface of the globe were only the effects of subterraneous fires, and that all the irregularities must be attributed to the violent shocks which they have produced. This, for example, is the opinion of Mr. Ray; he imagines that all mountains have been formed by earthquakes, or the explosion of volcanos, as Monti di Cinere, the new island near Santorini, &c. but he has not considered that the slight elevations formed by the eruption of a volcano, or by the action of an earthquake, are not internally composed of horizontal strata, as all other mountains are; for by digging in the Monti di Cinere we meet with calcined stones, cinders, burnt earths, metallic dross, pumice-stones, &c. all mixed and confounded like a heap. Besides, if earthquakes and subterraneous fires had produced the great mountains of the earth, as the Cordeliers, Mount Taurus, the Alps, &c. the prodigious force necessary to raise these enormous masses might, at the same time, have destroyed a great part of the surface of the globe; and earthquakes, requisite to produce such effects, must have been of inconceivable violence, since the most famous of which history makes mention have not had sufficient power to form a single mountain; for example, in the time of Valentian I. an earthquake happened, which was felt throughout all the known world;[AA] and yet not a mountain was thrown up by it. [AA] As Ammianus Marcellinus relates, lib. 26. cap. 14. It is nevertheless certain, that although we might be able to find an earthquake sufficiently powerful to throw up the highest mountains, it would not be sufficient to disorder the rest of the globe.