But then it is also necessary to include in this
character a general hardness and solidity in those vertical strata,
otherwise they would not have been properly alpine, or have resisted the
wearing and washing powers of the globe, so as to have remained higher
than the others; for, the vertical position, or great inclination of
those strata, should rather have disposed them the more to dissolution
and decay. Let us now see how far we shall be justified in that general
conclusion, by the examination of those bodies.
The fact is certain, that those alpine bodies are much harder, or less
subject to dissolution and decay, than the horizontal strata. But this
must be taken in the general, and will by no means apply to particular
cases which might be compared. Nothing, for example, more solid than the
lime-stones, or marbles, and iron-stones; nothing more hard or solid
than the chirt or flint; and all these are found among the horizontal
strata. But, while some strata among those horizontal beds are
thus perfectly solid, others are found with so slight degrees of
consolidation, that we should not be able to ascribe it to the proper
cause, without that gradation of the effect, which leads us to impute
the slightest degree of consolidation to the same operations that have
produced the complete solidity.
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