great inclined masses, while in many cases there has been projected
through the rents rocky matter more or less resembling the great
inferior crystalline mass. This rocky matter must have been in a
state of fusion from heat at the time of its projection, for it is
often found to have run into and filled up lateral chinks in these
rents. There are even instances where it has been rent again, and a
newer melted matter of the same character sent through the opening.
Finally, in the crust as thus arranged there are, in many places,
chinks containing veins of metal. Thus, there is first a great
inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock, and probably resting
immediately on the fused and expanded matter of the interior: next,
layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses of melted
inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and confusedly at
various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these into
masses, and tossing them out of their original levels. This is an
outline of the arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far as we
can observe it. It is, at first sight, a most confused scene; but
after some careful observation, we readily detect in it a regularity
and order from which much instruction in the history of our globe is
to be derived.

The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the
volcanic, have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of the
earth in its present form. They are indeed of an order of events
which we see going on, under the agency of more or less intelligible
causes, even down to the present day. We may therefore consider them
generally as comparatively recent transactions. Abstracting them
from the investigations before us, we arrive at the idea of the earth
in its first condition as a globe of its present size--namely, as a
mass, externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind of