128. If we would compare this theory with others, as to the invisible agents which it employs, we must consider, that fire and water are the two powers which all of them must make use of, so that they can differ from one another only by the way in which they combine these powers. In Dr Hutton's system, water is first employed to deposit and arrange, and then fire to consolidate, mineralize, and lastly, to elevate the strata; but with respect to the unstratified or crystallized substances, the action of fire only is recognised. The system having least affinity to this is the Neptunian, which ascribes the formation of all minerals to the action of water alone, and extends this hypothesis even to the unstratified rocks. Here, therefore, the action of fire is entirely excluded; and the Neptunists have certainly made a great sacrifice to the love of truth, or of paradox, in rejecting the assistance of so powerful an auxiliary.[37] [Footnote 37: NOTE XXIII.] 129. In the systems which employ the agency of the latter element, we are to look for a greater resemblance to that of Dr Hutton, though many and great marks of distinction are easily perceived. In the cosmologies, for example, of LEIBNITZ and BUFFON, fire and water are both employed, as well as in this; but they are employed in a reverse order. These philosophers introduce the action of fire first, and then the action of water, which is to invert the order of nature altogether, as the consolidation of the rocks must be posterior to their stratification. Indeed, the theory of Buffon is singularly defective: besides inverting the order of the two great operations of stratification and consolidation, and of course giving no real explanation of the latter, it gives no account of the elevation, or highly inclined position of the strata; it makes no distinction between stratified and unstratified bodies, nor does it offer any but the most unsatisfactory explanation of the inequalities of the earth's surface. This system, therefore, has but a very distant resemblance to the Huttonian theory.[38] [Footnote 38: NOTE XXIV.]