It may be very easy for
our author to form those explanations of natural phenomena; it costs
no tedious observation of facts, which are to be gathered with labour,
patience, and attention; he has but to look into his own fancy, as
philosophers did in former times, when they saw the abhorrence of a
vacuum and explained the pump. It is thus that we are here told the
consolidation of strata _arises from the mutual attraction of the
component particles of stones to each other_; the power, by which the
particles of solid stony bodies retain their places in relation to each
other, and resist separation from the mass, may, no doubt, be properly
enough termed their mutual attractions; but we are not here inquiring
after that power; we are to investigate the power by which the particles
of hard and stony bodies had been separated, contrary to their mutual
attractions, in order to form new concretions, by being again brought
within the spheres of action in which their mutual attractions might
take place, and make them one solid body. Now, to say that this is by
their mutual attraction, is either to misunderstand the proper question,
or to give a most preposterous answer.
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