Buffon's Natural History, Volume I (of 10)

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Comte de Buffon Georges Louis Leclerc. Buffon's Natural History, Volume I (of 10)

PREFACE

THE THEORY OF THE EARTH

PROOF. OF. THE THEORY OF THE EARTH

ARTICLE I. ON THE FORMATION OF THE PLANETS

ARTICLE II. FROM THE SYSTEM OF WHISTON6

ARTICLE III. FROM THE SYSTEM OF BURNET.7

ARTICLE IV. FROM THE SYSTEM OF WOODWARD

ARTICLE V. EXPOSITION OF SOME OTHER SYSTEMS

ARTICLE VI. GEOGRAPHY

ARTICLE VII. ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE STRATA, OR BEDS OF EARTH

ARTICLE VIII. ON SHELLS, AND OTHER MARINE PRODUCTIONS FOUND IN THE INTERIOR PARTS OF THE EARTH

ARTICLE IX. ON THE INEQUALITIES OF THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH

ARTICLE X. OF RIVERS

Отрывок из книги

Neither the figure of the earth, its motion, nor its external connections with the rest of the universe, pertain to our present investigation. It is the internal structure of the globe, its composition, form, and manner of existence which we purpose to examine. The general history of the earth should doubtless precede that of its productions, as a necessary study for those who wish to be acquainted with Nature in her variety of shapes, and the detail of facts relative to the life and manners of animals, or to the culture and vegetation of plants, belong not, perhaps, so much to Natural History, as to the general deductions drawn from the observations that have been made upon the different materials which compose the terrestrial globe: as the heights, depths, and inequalities of its form; the motion of the sea, the direction of mountains, the situation of rocks and quarries, the rapidity and effects of currents in the ocean, &c. This is the history of nature in its most ample extent, and these are the operations by which every other effect is influenced and produced. The theory of these effects constitutes what may be termed a primary science, upon which the exact knowledge of particular appearances as well as terrestrial substances entirely depends. This description of science may fairly be considered as appertaining to physics; but does not all physical knowledge, in which no system is admitted, form part of the History of Nature?

In a subject of great magnitude, whose relative connections are difficult to trace, and where some facts are but partially known, and others uncertain and obscure, it is more easy to form a visionary system, than to establish a rational theory; thus it is that the Theory of the Earth has only hitherto been treated in a vague and hypothetical manner; I shall therefore but slightly mention the singular notions of some authors who have written upon the subject.

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These causes act with greater force under the equator than in other climates, for there the winds are more regular and the tides run higher; the most extensive chains of mountains are also near the equator. The mountains of Africa and Peru are the highest known, they frequently extend themselves through whole provinces, and stretch, to considerable distances under the ocean. The mountains of Europe and Asia, which extend from Spain to China, are not so high as those of South America and Africa. The mountains of the North, according to the relation of travellers, are only hills in comparison with those of the Southern countries. Besides, there are very few islands in the Northern Seas, whereas in the torrid zone they are almost innumerable, and as islands are only the summits of mountains, it is evident that the surface of the earth has many more inequalities towards the equator than in the northerly climes.

It is therefore evident that the prodigious chain of mountains which run from the West to the East in the old continent, and from the North to the South in the new, must have been produced by the general motion of the tides; but the origin of all the inferior mountains must be attributed to the particular motions of currents, occasioned by the winds and other irregular agitations of the sea: they may probably have been produced by a combination of all those motions, which must be capable of infinite variations, since the winds and different positions of islands and coasts change the regular course of the tides, and compel them to flow in every possible direction: it is, therefore, not in the least astonishing that we should see considerable eminences, whose courses have no determined direction. But it is sufficient for our present purpose to have demonstrated that mountains are not the produce of earthquakes, or other accidental causes, but that they are the effects resulting from the general order of nature, both as to their organization and the position of the materials of which they are composed.

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