ces shall be found to require the one or other of those
conclusions. Here, therefore, we are again remitted to the history of
nature, in order to find matter of fact by which this question may be
properly decided.

If the present land had been discovered by the subsiding of the waters,
there has not been a former land, from whence materials had been
procured for the construction of the present, when at the bottom of the
sea; for, there is no vestige remaining of that land, the whole land of
the present earth having been formed evidently at the bottom of the sea.
Neither could the natural productions of the sea have been accumulated,
in the shape in which we now find them, on the surface of this earth;
for, How should the Alps and Andes have been formed within the sea
from the natural productions of the water? Consequently, this is a
supposition inconsistent with every natural appearance.

The supposition, therefore, of the subsidence of the former ocean,
for the purpose of discovering the present land, is beset with more
difficulty than the simple erection of the bottom of the former ocean;
for, _first_, There is a place to provide for the retirement of the
waters of the ocean; and, _2dly_, There is required a work of equal
magnitude; this is, the swallowing up of that former continent, which
had procured the materials of the present land.

On the one hand, the subsiding of the surface of the ocean would but
make the former land appear the higher; and, on the other, the sinking
the body of the former land into the solid globe, so as to swallow up
the greater part of the ocean after it, if not a natural impossibility,
would be at least a superfluous exertion of the power of nature. Such an
operation as this would discover as little wisdom in the end elected, as
in the means appropriated to that end; for, if the land be not wasted
and worn away in the natural operations of the globe, Why make such a
convulsion in the world in order to renew the land? If, again, the land
naturally decays, Why employ so extraordinary a power, in order to hide
a former continent of land, and puzzle man?

Let us now consider how far the other proposition, of strata being
elevated by the power of heat above the level of the sea, may be
confirmed from the examination of natural appearances.

The strata formed at the bottom of the ocean are necessarily horizontal
in their position, or nearly so, and continuous in their horizontal
direction