114. Such, according to Dr Hutton's theory, are the changes which the daily operations of waste have produced on the surface of the globe. These operations, inconsiderable if taken separately, become great, by conspiring all to the same end, never counteracting one another, but proceeding, through a period of indefinite extent, continually in the same direction. Thus every thing descends, nothing returns upward; the hard and solid bodies every where dissolve, and the loose and soft no where consolidate. The powers which tend to preserve, and those which tend to change the condition of the earth's surface, are never _in equilibrio_; the latter are, in all cases, the most powerful, and, in respect of the former, are like living in comparison of dead forces. Hence the law of decay is one which suffers no exception: The elements of all bodies were once loose and unconnected, and to the same state nature has appointed that they should all return. 115. It affords no presumption against the reality of this progress, that, in respect of man, it is too slow to be immediately perceived: The utmost portion of it to which our experience can extend, is evanescent, in comparison with the whole, and must be regarded as the momentary increment of a vast progression, circumscribed by no other limits than the duration of the world. TIME performs the office of integrating the infinitesimal parts of which this progression is made up; it collects them into one sum, and produces from them an amount greater than any that can be assigned. 116. While on the surface of the earth so much is every where going to decay, no new production of mineral substances is found in any region accessible to man. The instances of what are called petrifactions, or the formation of stony substances by means of water, which we sometimes observe, whether they be ferruginous concretions, or calcareous, or, as happens in some rare cases, siliceous stalactites, are too few in number, and too inconsiderable in extent, to be deemed material exceptions to this general rule. The bodies thus generated, also, are no sooner formed, than they become subject to waste and dissolution, like all the other hard substances in nature; so that they but retard for a while the progress by which they are all resolved into dust, and sooner or later committed to the bosom of the deep.