" This is an answer with regard to the _concreting power_, a
subject about which we certainly are not here inquiring. Our author,
indeed, has mentioned a _consolidating power_; but that is an improper
expression; we are here inquiring, How the interstices, between the
collected materials of strata, deposited at the bottom of the sea, have
been filled with a hard substance, instead of the fluid water which had
originally occupied those spaces. Our author then continues; "If these
particles leave any interstices, these are filled with water, which no
ways obstructs their solidity when the points of contact are numerous;
hence the decrepitation of many species of stones when heated."
If I understand our author's argument, the particles of stone are, by
their mutual attractions, to leave those hard and solid bodies which
compose the strata, that is to say, those hard bodies are to dissolve
themselves; but, To what purpose? This must be to fill up the
interstices, which we must suppose occupied by the water. In that case,
we should find the original interstices filled with the substances which
had composed the strata, and we should find the water translated into
the places of those bodies; here would be properly a transmutation, but
no consolidation of the strata, such as we are here to look for, and
such as we actually find among those strata.
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