layers which were laid down on it. Is not that simple common sense?

Then apply that reasoning to the soils and rocks in any spot on
earth. If you made a deep boring, and found, as you would in many
parts of this kingdom, that the boring, after passing through the
soil of the field, entered clays or loose sands, you would say the
clays were there before the soil. If it then went down into
sandstone, you would say--would you not?--that sandstone must have
been here before the clay; and however thick--even thousands of feet-
-it might be, that would make no difference to your judgment. If
next the boring came into quite different rocks; into a different
sort of sandstone and shales, and among them beds of coal, would you
not say--These coal-beds must have been here before the sandstones?
And if you found in those coal-beds dead leaves and stems of plants,
would you not say--Those plants must have been laid down here before
the layers above them, just as the dead leaves in the pond were?

If you then came to a layer of limestone, would you not say the same?
And if you found that limestone full of shells and corals, dead, but
many of them quite perfect, some of the corals plainly in the very
place in which they grew, would you not say--These creatures must
have lived down here before the coal was laid on top of them? And
if, lastly, below the limestone you came to a bottom rock quite
different again, would you not say--The bottom rock must have been
here before the rocks on the top of it?

And if that bottom rock rose up a few miles off, two thousand feet,
or any other height, into hills, what would you say then? Would you
say: "Oh, but the rock is not bottom rock; is not under the
limestone here, but higher than it. So perhaps in this part it has