and washing powers of the globe, so as to have remained higher
than the others; for, the vertical position, or great inclination of
those strata, should rather have disposed them the more to dissolution
and decay. Let us now see how far we shall be justified in that general
conclusion, by the examination of those bodies.

The fact is certain, that those alpine bodies are much harder, or less
subject to dissolution and decay, than the horizontal strata. But this
must be taken in the general, and will by no means apply to particular
cases which might be compared. Nothing, for example, more solid than the
lime-stones, or marbles, and iron-stones; nothing more hard or solid
than the chirt or flint; and all these are found among the horizontal
strata. But, while some strata among those horizontal beds are
thus perfectly solid, others are found with so slight degrees of
consolidation, that we should not be able to ascribe it to the proper
cause, without that gradation of the effect, which leads us to impute
the slightest degree of consolidation to the same operations that have
produced the complete solidity. While, therefore, the most perfect
solidity is found in certain strata, or occasionally among the
horizontal bodies, this forms no part of their character in general, or
cannot be considered as a distinctive mark, as it truly is with
regard to the alpine strata. These last have a general character of
consolidation and indissolubility, which is in a manner universal. We
are, therefore, now to inquire into the cause of this distinction, and
to form some hypothesis that may be tried by the actual state of things,
in being compared with natural appearances.

As the general cause of consolidation among mineral bodies, formed
originally of loose materials, has been found to consist in certain
degrees of fusion or cementation of those materials by means of heat;
and as, in the examination of the horizontal strata we actually
find very different degrees of consolidation in the several strata,
independent of their positions in relation to height or depth, we have
reason to believe that the heat, or consolidating operation, has not
been equally employed in relation to them all.

We are not now inquiring how an inferior stratum should have been heated
in a lesser degree, or not consolidated, while a superior stratum had
been consolidated in the most perfect manner; we are to reason upon a
fact, which is, that the horizontal strat