There is, however, a geognostic fact, which, in preference to all others, has been cited in evidence of violent revolutions and deluges, that is, the appearance of conglomerates or of reproduced kinds of stone. Indeed, there might still be a wide field for investigation here, and more than one formation, which now passes for sandstone, might be acknowledged as an original and chemical production; without having occasion to go so far as Mr Gerhard does with greywacke,--that is, to consider them as immediate precipitates from the atmosphere. But still conglomerates sufficiently genuine, will remain from the transition period through all the subsequent formations, to serve as acknowledged monuments of destruction, as well as of the renovation of what was destroyed. These are the Codices rescripti, in the archives of the Earth, out of which, the antiquarian will one day decipher the almost obliterated traces of her former condition, as well as the history of her changes. Though these conglomerates deviate so much in their nature, and in the character of their origin, from chemical productions, they have yet among themselves this remarkable and common characteristic, that, with few exceptions, the older are much less varied in character, and more extensive in distribution, than the newer, and that, at length, the newest conglomerates become mere local appearances. But, in reference to the main question which engages our attention, we may conjecture that the beds of rocks from which the sea had never retreated, might be assailed by its floods and currents, and shattered to pieces, as happens even in our own time, and the fragments be again reunited into solid rocks, by means of the still remaining dissolved matter in the water. But of many conglomerates it is evident that they have been deposited on the dry land, in the same way as our gravels. Jupiter, who took counsel with himself, whether he would destroy the sinful world with fire or water, and at length decided for water[403], may not be so justly considered the author of these appearances, as Saturn, who devoured his children. Or, to be less metaphorical in our language, it may perhaps have been with the origin of conglomerates, as it is in our own day with the origin of fragments of rock and boulders, in which the rock being fractured in various places by the alternations of heat and cold, by the influence of air and atmospheric water, falls into pieces of greater or smaller magnitude, which are carried forward by the water, and gradually rounded in their progress, so that they assume a more perfectly globular shape the farther they are removed from their original situation. Therefore, as regards the foregoing enquiry, it is not an unimportant circumstance, that the long but continual rolling of the boulders during their rounding, appears to be much more efficacious than a rapid and violent impetus, and that, in this case, as in