In
that case, appearances might be found to induce natural philosophers to
conclude that there were in our land primary parts, which had not the
marine origin which is generally to be acknowledged in the structure
of this earth; and, by finding other masses, of marine origin,
superincumbent upon those primary mountains, they might make strange
suppositions in order to explain those natural appearances.
Let us now see what has been advanced by those philosophers who, though
they term these parts of the earth _primordial_, and not _primitive_, at
the same time appear to deny to those parts an origin analogous to that
of their secondary mountains, or strata that are aquiform in their
construction.
M. de Luc, after having long believed that the strata of the Alps had
been formed like those of the low countries, at the bottom of the sea,
gives an account of the occasion by which he was first confirmed in the
opposite opinion.[26] Like a true philosopher, he gives us the reason of
this change.
[Note 26: Lettres Physique et Morales sur l'Histoire de la Terre, tom.
2. pag. 206.
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