which we are not able to explain.
This only is certain, from what we see, that there is nothing formed
in one epoch of nature, but what has been repeated in another, however
dissimilar may be the operations which had intervened between those
several epochs.

It must not be alleged, that the heights of the Oural mountains, or the
hardness of their rocks, make an essential distinction between them
and the argillaceous or arenaceous strata of the plains; solidity and
hardness, as well as changes in their height and natural position, has
been superinduced in operations posterior to the collection of those
masses,--operations which may be formed in various degrees, even in the
different parts of the same mass. If this is the case, there can be no
difficulty in conceiving a stratum, which appears to be argillaceous
or marly in the plains, to be found jasper in the Oural mountains. But
there is nothing in the Oural mountains, that may not be found some
where or other in the plains, although the soft and easily decomposing
argillaceous strata be not found upon the Oural mountains, or the Alps,
for this reason, that had those mountains been formed of such materials,
there had not been a mountain there at this day.

But surely the greatest possible error, with regard to the philosophy of
this earth, would be to confound the sediment of a river with the strata
of the globe; bodies deposited upon the surface of the earth, with those
sunk at the bottom of the sea; and things which only form the travelled
or transported soil, with those which constitute the substratum or the
solid earth. How far M. Pallas has committed this oversight, I leave
others to determine. After mentioning those strata in which wood is
found petrified, and metallic minerals formed, he thus proceeds, (page
69).

"Dans ces memes depots sableux et souvent limoneux, gisent les restes
des grands animaux de l'Inde: ces ossemens d'elephans, de rhinoceros, de
buffles monstrueux, dont on deterre tous les jours un si grand nombre,
et qui font l'admiration des curieux. En Siberie, ou l'on a decouvert le
long de presque toutes les rivieres ces restes d'animaux etrangers,
et l'ivoire meme bien conserve en si grande abondance, qu'il forme un
article de commerce, en Siberie, dis je, c'est aussi la couche la plus
moderne de limon sablonneux qui leur sert de sepulture, et nulle part
ces monumens etrangers sont si frequens, qu'aux endroits ou la grande
chaine, qui domine su