Here are two things to be considered; the interesting facts described by our author, and the inference that he would have us draw from those facts. It would appear from the facts, that the body of schistus below, and that of lime-stone above, had not undergone the same disordering operations, or by no means in the same degree. But our author has formed another conclusion; he says, that these lime-stone strata must have been formed precisely in the place and order in which they lie at present; and the reason for this is, because these strata appeared to him to follow perfectly the contour of the summit of this mountain. Now, had there been in the top of this mountain a deep hollow encompassed about with the schistus rock; and had this cavity been now found filled with horizontal strata, there might have been some shadow of reason for supposing those strata to have been deposited upon the top of the mountain. But to suppose, _first_, that shells and corals should be deposited upon the convex summit of a mountain which was then covered by the sea; _secondly_, that these moveable materials should remain upon the summit, while the sea had changed its place; and, _lastly_, that those shells and corals left by the sea upon the top of a mountain should become strata of solid limestone, and have also metallic veins in it, certainly holds of no principle of natural philosophy that I am acquainted with. If, therefore, such an appearance as this were to be employed either in illustration or confirmation of a theory, it would itself require to be explained; but this is a task that this cosmologists does not seem willing to undertake. He has formed a hypothesis for explaining the general appearance of that which was once the bottom of the sea being now found forming the summits of our mountains; but surely this philosopher will acknowledge, that those natural appearances, in any particular place, will be the same, whether we suppose the bottom of the sea to have been raised, as in the present theory, or the surface of the sea to have sunk according to his hypothesis. For, it is equally easy to suppose a portion of the earth to have been raised all this height, as to suppose all the rest of the surface of the globe to have sunk an equal space, while a small portion of the bottom of the sea, remaining here and there fixed in its place, became the highest portion of the globe. Consequently, whatever evidence this philosopher shall find in support of his theory of the present earth, (a subject which it is not our purpose to examine) it cannot be allowed that he has here brought any argument capable of disproving the elevation of the bottom of the sea; a supposition which other theories may require.