Of this I am certain, that in a very little space of this country, in
many places, such a course of things is to be perceived. Nothing so
common as to find alternated, over and over again, beds of sand-stone
without animal bodies, beds of coal and schistus abounding with
vegetable bodies, beds of lime-stone formed of shells and corals, and
beds or particular strata of iron-stone containing sometimes vegetable
sometimes animal bodies, or both. Here, indeed, the strata are most
commonly inclined; it is seldom they are horizontal; consequently, as
across the whole country, all the strata come up to the day, and may be
seen in the beds of our rivers, we have an opportunity of observing that
great variety which is in nature, and which we are not able to explain.
This only is certain, from what we see, that there is nothing formed
in one epoch of nature, but what has been repeated in another, however
dissimilar may be the operations which had intervened between those
several epochs.
It must not be alleged, that the heights of the Oural mountains, or the
hardness of their rocks, make an essential distinction between them
and the argillaceous or arenaceous strata of the plains; solidity and
hardness, as well as changes in their height and natural position, has
been superinduced in operations posterior to the collection of those
masses,--operations which may be formed in various degrees, even in the
different parts of the same mass.
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