the doctrine of infiltration to those strata of mineral coal as to any
other; they say that bituminous matter is infiltrated with the water,
impregnates certain strata of earth with bituminous matter, and thus
converts them into mineral coal, and bituminous strata. This is not
reasoning physically, or by the inductive method of proceeding upon
matter of fact; it is reasoning fantastically, or by making gratuitous
supposition founded merely on imagination. It was thus that natural
philosophers reasoned before the age of science; the wonder now is,
how men of science, in the present enlightened age, should suffer such
language of ignorance and credulity to pass uncensured.

The subject which I am now to treat of consists of peculiar strata of
the earth, bodies which we may investigate through all the stages of
their change, which is extreme; for, from vegetable bodies produced upon
the habitable earth, they are now become a mineral body, and the most
perfect coal,--a thing extremely different from what it had been, and
a thing which cannot be supposed to have been accomplished by the
operation of water alone, or any other agent in nature with which we
are acquainted, except the action of fire or heat. It is therefore
impossible for a philosopher, reasoning upon actual physical principles,
not to acknowledge in this a complete proof of the theory which has been
given, and a complete refutation of that aqueous operation which has
been so inconsiderately supposed as consolidating the strata of the
earth, and forming the various mineral concretions which are found in
that great body.

To see this, it will be sufficient to trace the progress of vegetable
and animal substances, (bodies which had certainly lived by means of a
former earth), to this changed state in which they have become perfect
mineral bodies, and constitute a part of the present earth. For, as
these changes are perfectly explained by the one theory, and absolutely
inconsistent with the other, there arises from this a conviction that
must be irresistible to a person who can give proper attention to a
chain of reasoning from effect to cause.

But if we thus succeed to illustrate the theory of the earth by the
natural history of those particular strata, we have but one step farther
to make in order to bring all the other parts of the earth, whether
stratified or not, into the most perfect consistence with the theory;
now this step, it will be most easy to make;