de Luc, in his Theory of the earth, has given us the history
of a disaster which befell this well contrived world;--a disaster which
caused the general deluge, and which, without a miracle, must have
undone a system of living beings that are so well adapted to the present
state of things. But, surely, general deluges form no part of the theory
of the earth; for, the purpose of this earth is evidently to maintain
vegetable and animal life, and not to destroy them.
Besides these imaginary great operations in the natural history of this
earth, we have also certain suppositions of geologists and mineralists
with regard to the effect of water, for explaining to us the
consolidation of the loose materials of which the strata of the earth
had been composed, and also for producing every other appearance, or any
which shall happen to occur in the examination of the earth, and require
to be explained. That this is no exaggerated representation, and
that this is all we have as a theory, in the suppositions of those
geologists, will appear from the following state of the case.
They suppose water the agent employed in forming the solid bodies of the
earth, and in producing those crystallised bodies which appear in
the mineral kingdom.
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