twenty fathoms, there is no reason why we should suppose nature limited,
whether in raising a greater mass of earth, or of raising it a greater
height. That the height to which the land of this globe shall be raised,
is a thing limited in the system of this earth, in having a certain
bounds which it shall not exceed, cannot be disputed, while wisdom in
that system is acknowledged; but it is equally evident, that we cannot
set any other bounds to the operation of this cause, than those which
nature appears actually to have observed in elevating a continent of
land above the level of the sea for the necessary purpose of this world,
in which there is to be produced a variety of climates, as there is of
plants, from the burning coast under the equator to the frozen mountains
of the Andes.

Here therefore we have, although upon a smaller scale, the most perfect
view of that cause which has every where been exerted in the greater
operations of this earth, and has transformed the bottom of the sea to
the summits of our mountains. Now, this moving power appears to have
been the effect of an internal fire, a power which has been universally
employed for the consolidation of strata, by introducing various degrees
of fusion among the matter of those masses, and a power which is
peculiarly adapted to that essential purpose in the system of this
earth, when dry land is formed by the elevation of what before had
existed as the bottom of the sea.

I hope it will not be thought that too much is here adduced in
confirmation of this part of the theory. The elevation of strata from
their original position, which was horizontal, is a material part; it
is a fact which is to be verified, not by some few observations, or
appearances here and there discovered in seeking what is singular or
rare, but by a concurrence of many observations, by what is general upon