s de s'y rassembler et de
devenir destructives vers le bas. Au lieu que dans les montagnes ou
les terrasses subsisteront encore apres que tous les rochers se seront
_eboules_, les eaux etant recues par reprises, perdront beaucoup de
leur rapidite. Elles se rassembleront dans les enfoncemens des petites
vallees superieures, elles s'y formeront des lits qu'elles ne rongeront
presque point; et la _vegetation_ restera tranquille partout."

Let us now consider the height of the _Alps_, in general, to have been
much greater than it is at present; and this is a supposition of which
we have no reason to suspect the fallacy; for, the wasted summits of
those mountains attest its truth. There would then have been immense
valleys of ice sliding down in all directions towards the lower country,
and carrying large blocks of granite to a great distance, where they
would be variously deposited, and many of them remain an object of
admiration to after ages, conjecturing from whence, or how they came.
Such are the great blocks of granite which now repose upon the hills
of _Saleve_. M. de Saussure, who has examined them carefully, gives
demonstration of the long time during which they have remained in their
present place. The lime-stone bottom around being dissolved by the rain,
while that which serves as the basis of those masses stands high above
the rest of the rock, in having been protected from the rain. But no
natural operation of the globe can explain the transportation of those
bodies of stone, except the changed state of things arising from the
degradation of the mountains.

Every thing, therefore, tends to show that the surface of the earth must
wear; but M. de Luc, although he allows the principles on which this
reasoning is founded, labours to prove that those destructive causes
will not operate in time. Now, What would be the consequence of such a
system?--That the source of vegetation upon the surface of the earth
would cease at last, and perfect sterility be necessarily the effect of
allowing no farther degradation to the surface of the earth; for, What
is to supply the matter of plants? Water, air, and light alone, will not
suffice; there are necessarily required other elements which the earth
alone affords. If, therefore, this world is to continue, as it has done,
to form continents of calcareous strata at the bottom of the ocean, the
animals which form these strata, with their _exuviae_, must be fed. But,
on what can th