Now, this principle of reasoning is the foundation on which the ablest modern Geologists claim to build their science. The untiring hand of Nature is ever busy around us: they ask us to come and look at her works, and to judge of what she has done in past ages, by that which she is now doing before our eyes. She is still, they say, building up her strata all over the globe, of limestone, and sandstone, and clay; she is still lifting up in one place the bed of the ocean, and in another submerging the dry land; she is still bursting open the Crust of the Earth by the action of internal fire, disturbing and tilting up the horizontal strata; she is still upheaving her mountains and scooping out her valleys. All these operations are open to our inspection; we may go forth and study them for ourselves; we may examine the works that are wrought, and we may discover, too, the causes by which they are produced. And if it should appear that a very close analogy exists between these works that are now coming into existence, and the long series of works that are piled up in the Crust of the Earth, it is surely not unreasonable to refer the latter class of phenomena to the action of the same natural causes which we know to have produced the former.
It cannot be denied that this argument is deserving of a fair and candid consideration. Let us proceed, then, to examine how far it is founded on fact, and how far it can be justly applied to the various heads of Geological theory. We will commence with the origin and history of Stratified Rocks; for this constitutes, in a manner, the framework on which the whole system of Geology is supported and held together. It is alleged that the elements of which Stratified Rocks are composed are but the broken fragments and minute atoms of pre-existing rocks, carried off by the agents of Denudation, and spread out over some distant area in regular beds or layers; which, in progress of ages, were slowly consolidated into rocks of various quality and texture. With the view of testing this theory by the light of the principle just explained, we purpose, in the first place, to exhibit some examples of the many forms in which the process of Denudation is going on at the present day all over the world; and afterward, to show that out of the materials thus obtained Stratified Rocks of every description--Mechanical, Chemical, Organic--are being regularly built up in sundry places; and that these correspond in every essential feature with the Stratified Rocks in the Crust of the Earth.