It would, therefore, require to be discussed with some degree of
precision in examining the particulars; but of these, there is so great
a field, and the subject is so complicated in its nature, that volumes
might be written upon particular branches only, without exhausting what
might be laid upon the subject; because the evidence, though strong in
many particulars, is chiefly to be enforced by a multitude of facts,
conspiring, in a diversity of ways, to point out one truth, and by the
impossibility of reconciling all these facts, except by means of one
supposition.
But, as it is necessary to give some proof of that which is to be
a principle in our reasoning afterwards, I shall now endeavour to
generalise the subject as much as possible, in order to answer that end,
and, at the same time, to point out the particular method of inquiry.
There are to be found, among the various strata of the globe, bodies
formed of two different kinds of substances, _siliceous_ bodies, and
those which may be termed _sulphureous_ or _phlogistic_. With one or
other, or both of those we substances, every different consolidated
stratum of the globe will be found so intimately mixed, or closely
connected, that it must be concluded, by whatever cause those bodies
of siliceous and sulphureous matter had been changed from a fluid to a
concreted state, the strata must have been similarly affected by the
same cause.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57