He has included this supposed
difficulty among a string of other arguments by which he would refute my
theory with regard to the igneous origin of stony substances, as if I
had made that fire a necessary condition or a principle in forming my
theory of consolidation. Now, it is precisely the reverse; and this is
what I beg that mineral philosophers will particularly attend to, and
not give themselves so much unnecessary trouble, and me so disagreeable
a talk. I have proved that those stony substances have been in the fluid
state of fusion; and from this, I have inferred the former existence of
an internal heat, a subterraneous fire, or a certain cause of fusion by
whatever name it shall be called, and by whatever means it shall have
been procured. The nature of that operation by which strata had been
consolidated, like that by which they had been composed, must, according
to my philosophy, be decided by ocular demonstration; from examining the
internal evidence which is to be found in those bodies as we see them in
the earth; because the consolidating operation is not performed in our
sight, no more than their stratification which our author has also
denied to have been made, as I have said, by the deposits of materials
at the bottom of the sea.
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