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Such are the conclusions to which we are necessarily led by the objects that we meet with at every step, and which we can always verify, by examples drawn from almost every country. These great and terrible events are every where distinctly recorded, so as to be always legible by the eye skilled to decypher their history in the monuments which they have left behind.

But what is still more astonishing and not less certain, life has not always existed upon the globe; and it is easy for the observer to distinguish the point at which it has begun to deposit its productions.

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If we ascend to higher points of elevation, and advance towards the great ridges, the craggy summits of the mountain chains, we shall presently find those remains of marine animals, those innumerable shells, of which we have spoken, becoming more rare, and at length disappearing altogether. We arrive at strata of a different nature, which contain no vestiges of living beings. Nevertheless, their crystallization, and even their stratification, shew that they have been also in a liquid state at their formation; their inclined position, and the cliffs into which they are broken, shew that they also have been forcibly moved from their original places; the oblique manner in which they dip under the shelly strata, that they have been formed previously to these latter; and lastly, the height to which their rugged and bare peaks rise above all these shelly strata, that their summits had already emerged from the waters, when the shelly strata were forming.