It must be evident, here is a question that may not be easy to decide.
It is not to the degree of any change to which bodies may be subject,
that we are to appeal, in order to clear up the point in question,
but to a regular course of operations, which must appear to have been
successively transacted, and by which the different circumstances or
situations of those masses are to be discovered in their present state.
Now, though it does not concern the present theory that this question be
decided, as it is nothing but a repetition of the same operations that
we look for; nevertheless, it would be an interesting fact in the
natural history of this earth; and it would add great lustre to a theory
by which so great, so many operations were to be explained. I am far
from being sanguine in my expectations of giving all the satisfaction
in relation to this subject that I could wish; but it will be proper to
state what I have lately learned with regard to so curious a question,
that others, who shall have the opportunity, may be led to inquire, and
that thus the natural history of the earth may be enlarged, by a proper
investigation of its mineral operations.
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