By means of these known objects, we are to learn a great
deal of the natural history of this earth; and, it is in tracing that
history, from where we first perceive it, to the present state of
things, that forms the subject of a geological and mineralogical theory
of this earth. But, we are more especially enabled to trace those
operations of the earth, by means of the second kind of appearances,
which are now to be mentioned.
These again are the evident changes which those known bodies have
undergone, and which have been induced upon such collected masses of
which those bodies constitute a part. These changes are of three sorts;
_first_, the solid state, and various degrees of it, in which we now
find those masses which had been originally formed by the collection of
loose and incoherent materials; _secondly_, the subsequent changes which
have evidently happened to those consolidated masses which have been
broken and displaced, and which have had other mineral substances
introduced into those broken and disordered parts; and, _lastly_, that
great change of situation which has happened to this compound mass
formed originally at the bottom of the sea, a mass which, after being
consolidated in the mineral region, is now situated in the atmosphere
above the surface of the sea.
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