ere prevailing, instead of the horizontal which is proper to
strata formed in water; this, therefore, they also term primitive, and
suppose it to be from another origin than that of the subsidence of
materials moved in the waters of the globe; _lastly_, They observe both
strata and masses of calcareous matter in which they cannot distinguish
any marine body as is usual in other strata of the same substance; and
these calcareous masses being generally connected with their primitive
mountains, they have also included these collections of calcareous
matter, in which marine bodies are not observed, among the primitive
parts which they suppose to be the original construction of this globe.

It may be proper to see the description of a calcareous alpine mountain.
M. de Saussure gives us the following observations concerning a mountain
of this kind in the middle of the Alps, where the water divides in
running different ways towards the sea. It is in describing the passage
of the Bon-Homme, (Tom. 2. V. dans les Alpes).

"Sec. 759. Sur la droite ou au couchant de ces rochers, on voit une
montagne calcaire etonnante dans ce genre par la hardiesse avec laquelle
elle eleve contre le ciel ses cimes aigues et tranchantes, taillees
a angles vifs dans le costume des hautes cimes de granit. Elle est
pourtant bien surement calcaire, je l'ai observee de pres, et on
rencontre sur cette route les blocs qui s'en detachent.

"Cette pierre porte les caracteres des calcaires les plus anciennes; sa
couleur est grise, son grain assez fin, on n'y appercoit aucun vestige
de corps organises; ses couches sont peu epaisses, ondees et coupees
frequemment par des fentes paralleles entr'elles et perpendiculaires a
leurs plans. On trouve aussi parmi ces fragmens des breches calcaires
grises."

Here is a mountain which will rank with the most primitive of the earth;
But why? only because it is extremely consolidated without any mark of
organised body. Had there been in this mountain but one single shell, we
should not then have scrupled to conclude that the origin of this lofty
mountain had been the same with every marble or limestone in the earth.
But though, from the structure of this stone, there is no mark of its
having been formed immediately of the calcareous parts of animals, there
is every mark of those calcareous strata having been formed like other
marbles by deposit in the waters of the globe.

These two things are also homologated by the eq