relation of evaporation only with regard to heat, or it changes the
degree of heat which water may be made to sustain; consequently, we are
to look for no occult quality in water acting upon bodies at the bottom
of the deepest ocean, more than what can be observed in experiments
which we have it in our power to try.

With regard again to the effect of time: Though the continuance of time
may do much in those operations which are extremely slow, where no
change, to our observation, had appeared to take place, yet, where it
is not in the nature of things to produce the change in question, the
unlimited course of time would be no more effectual, than the moment by
which we measure events in our observations.

Water being the general medium in which bodies collected at the bottom
of the sea are always contained, if those masses of collected matter are
to be consolidated by solution, it must be by the dissolution of
those bodies in that water as a menstruum, and by the concretion or
crystallization of this dissolved matter, that the spaces, first
occupied by water in those masses, are afterwards to be filled with a
hard and solid substance; but without some other power, by which the
water contained in those cavities and endless labyrinths of the strata,
should be separated in proportion as it had performed its task, it is
inconceivable how those masses, however changed from the state of their
first subsidence, should be absolutely consolidated, without any visible
or fluid water in their composition.

Besides this difficulty of having the water separated from the porous
masses which are to be consolidated, there is another with which, upon
this supposition, we have to struggle. This is, From whence should come
the matter with which the numberless cavities in those masses are to be