I will not pretend to say that this has all the evidence that should be
required, in order to constitute a physical truth, or principle from
whence we were to reason farther in our theory; but, as a simple fact,
there is more probability for the thing having happened in that manner
than in any other; and perhaps this is all that may be attained, though
not all that were to be wished on the occasion. Let us now see how
far any confirmation may be obtained from the examination of all the
attending circumstances in those operations.
I have already mentioned, that I had long observed great masses of
_debris_, or an extremely coarse species of pudding-stone, situated on
the south as well as north sides of those schistus mountains, where the
alpine strata terminate in our view, and where I had been looking for
the connection of those with the softer strata of the low country.
It has surely been such appearances as these which have often led
naturalists to see the formation of secondary and tertiary strata formed
by the simple congestion of _debris_ from the mountains, and to suppose
those masses consolidated by the operation of that very element by which
they had been torn off from one place and deposited in another.
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