Il faudrait, au reste, bien
plus de fouilles et d observations pour etablir quelque chose de certain
sur l'ordre respectif qu'observent ces roches."
I would now ask, if in all this account of the gradation of rock from
the Oural mountains to the sandy coast of the Baltic, there is to be
observed any clear and distinctive mark of primitive, secondary, and
tertiary, mountains, farther than as one stratum may be considered as
either prior or posterior to another stratum, according to the order of
superposition in which they are found. We have every where evident marks
of the formation of strata by materials deposited originally in water;
for the most part, there is sufficient proof that this water in which
those materials had been deposited was the sea; we are likewise assured
that the operations of this living world producing animals, must
have, for a course of time, altogether inconceivably been exerted,
in preparing materials for this mass; and, lastly, from the changed
constitution of those masses, we may infer certain mineral operations
that melt the substance and alter the position of those horizontal
bodies.
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