The general result of the reasoning which we now have quoted, and what
follows in his examination, seems to terminate in this; that there are
various different compositions of mountains which this author cannot
allow to be the production of the sea; but it is not upon account of
the matter of which they are formed, or of the particular mixture and
composition of those species of matter, of which the variety is almost
indefinite. According to this philosopher, the distinction that we are
to make of those primordial and secondary competitions, consists in
this, that the first are in such a shape and structure as cannot be
conceived to be formed by subsidence in water.
M. de Saussure has carefully examined those same objects; and he seems
inclined to think that they must have been the operation of the ocean;
not in the common manner of depositing strata, but in some other way by
crystallization. The present theory supposes all those masses formed
originally in the ordinary manner, by the deposits or subsidence
of materials transported in the waters, and that those strata were
afterwards changed by operations proper to the mineral regions.
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