While the parts of the sphere without the spheroid are thus continually diminished, the loose earth and sand washed down from them, will be deposited at the bottom of the sea, and will form strata parallel to the surface of the superincumbent water. The actual and statical figure are thus brought nearer one another; and, at the same time the statical is changed, on the principle already explained, (the change in the direction of gravity,) and is made continually to approximate to a state, which when it has attained, no farther change can take place, viz. an oblate elliptic spheroid, of which the surface is perpendicular to the direction of gravity, having the equatorial diameter to the polar axis in the ratio of 230 to 229.] 440. In the preceding reasonings, we have supposed the process of decay and subsequent stratification to be carried on without interruption, till the whole of the land is covered by the sea. This supposition is useful for explaining the nature of the forces which have determined the figure of the earth; but there is no reason to think that it has ever been realized in its full extent, the elevation of strata from the bottom of the sea interrupting the progress, and producing new land in one place, as the old decays in another. The very same land also, which is wasted at its surface, may perhaps be lifted up by the forces that are placed under it; or it may be let down, undergoing alterations of its level, from causes that we do not perceive, but of which the action is undoubted, (§ 388.) But notwithstanding these interruptions, the general tendency to produce in the earth a spheroidal figure may remain, and more may be done by every revolution, to bring about the attainment of that figure than to cause a deviation from it. This figure, therefore, though never likely to be perfectly acquired, will be the _limiting_ or _asymptotic_ figure, if it may be so called, to which the earth will continually approach.