In the
case of stony substances, I have shown how unfounded all their theories
are for the production of those concretions, crystallizations, and
consolidated bodies. I am here to examine the subject of inflammable and
combustible bodies, which I believe have been little considered by those
theorists who suppose mineral bodies consolidated by infiltration. It is
here that we shall find an infinite difference between the aqueous and
igneous theories; for, we shall find it impossible to explain by the one
certain operations which must have necessarily required the great agent
generally employed in the other.
The subject of this chapter is a touch-stone for every theory of the
earth. In every quarter of this globe, perhaps in every extensive
country, bituminous strata are to be found; they are alternated with
those which are called aquiform, or which had been evidently formed by
subsidence of certain moved materials at the bottom of the sea; so far,
therefore, all those strata have had the same origin. In this point
I think I may assert, that all the different theories at present are
agreed; and it is only concerning certain transformations of those
strata, since their original collection, that have been ascribed to
different causes.
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