"
Science is indebted to this author for giving us so clear a picture
of natural appearances, and of his own reasoning upon those facts, in
forming his opinion; he thus leads astray no person of sound judgment,
although he may be in error. The disposition of things in the present
case are such, that, reasoning from his principles, this author could
not see the truth; because he had not been persuaded, that aquiform
strata could have been so changed by the chemical power of fusion, and
the mechanical force of bending while in a certain state of softness.
But though, in this case, the reasoning of this philosopher is to be
justified, so far as he proceeded upon principles which could not lead
him to the truth, his conduct is not so irreproachable in applying them
to cases by which their fallacy might have been detected. This author
acknowledges calcareous strata to be aquiform in their original; but,
in those mountains which he has so much examined, he will find those
aquiform bodies have undergone the same species of changes, which made
him conclude that those schistus mountains had not been truly aquiform,
as he at first had thought them.
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