OF THE CHANGES OF LAND INTO SEA AND SEA INTO LAND. By what has been said in the Articles I, VII, VIII, and IX, it appears that great and general changes have happened to the terrestrial globe; and it is as certain, from what we have related in other articles, that the surface of the earth has undergone particular alterations. Although the order, or succession, of these particular alterations is not perfectly known, yet we are acquainted with the principal causes; we can even distinguish their different effects; and if we could collect all the facts, which Natural and Civil History furnishes on the subject of the revolutions which have happened to the surface of the earth, we do not doubt but that the Theory of the Earth which we have, laid down would receive additional support. One of the principal causes of these alterations is the motion of the sea; a motion it has endured from the earliest ages; for since the sun, moon, earth, waters, air, &c. have existed from the time of the creation, the effects of the tides, the motion of the sea from east to west, as well as that of the winds and currents, must have been felt for the same space; and if even we should suppose the axis of the globe had formerly another inclination, and that the continents, as well as the sea, had another disposition, it does not destroy the motion of flux and reflux, nor alter the cause and effects of the winds: it is sufficient that the immense quantity of waters, which fill the vast space of the sea, is found in some part on the globe of the earth, for wherever they had been collected they would have still been subject to the same motions, and produced similar effects.