Some suppose the land to be discovered by the gradual retreat of the
ocean, without proposing to explain to us from whence had come the known
materials of a former earth, which compose the highest summits of the
mountains in the highest continents of the earth. Others suppose the
whole of a former earth to have subsided below the bottom even of the
present sea, and together with it all the water of the former sea, from
above the summits of the present mountains, which had then been at the
bottom of the former sea. The placing of the bottom of the sea, or any
part of it, in the atmosphere so as to be dry land, is no doubt a great
operation to be performed, and a difficult task to be explained; but
this is only an argument the more for philosophers to agree in adopting
the most reasonable means.
But though philosophers differ so widely in that point, this is not the
case with regard to the concretion of mineral bodies; here mineralists
seem to be almost all of one mind, at the same time without any reason,
at least, without any other reason than that false analogy which they
have inconsiderately formed from the operations of the surface of this
earth.
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