The visible
materials, which compose for the most part the strata of our south
alpine schisti, are so distinctly the _debris_ and _detritus_ of a
former earth, and so similar in their nature with those which for the
most part compose the strata on all hands acknowledged as secondary,
that there can remain no question upon that head. The consolidation,
again, of those strata, and the erection of them from their original
position, and from the place in which they had been formed, is another
question.
But the acknowledging strata, which had been formed in the sea of loose
materials, to be consolidated and raised into the place of land, is
plainly giving up the idea of primitive mountains. The only question,
therefore, which remains to be solved, must respect the order of things,
in comparing the alpine schisti with the secondary strata; and this
indeed forms a curious subject of investigation.
It is plain that the schisti had been indurated, elevated, broken, and
worn by attrition in water, before the secondary strata, which form the
most fertile parts of our earth, had existed.
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