Vir. Georg. L. 2
CHAP. II.
Of the various Strata or Beds observable in the Earth.
The various Strata or Beds, although but little different from the last, yet will deserve a distinct Consideration.
By the Strata or Beds, I mean those Layers of Minerals[a], Metals[], Earth, and Stone[c], lying under that upper Stratum, or Tegument of the Earth last spoken of, all of a prodigious Use to Mankind: Some being of great Use for Building; some serving for Ornament; some furnishing us with commodious Machines, and Tools to prepare our Food, and for Vessels and Utensils, and for multitudes of other Uses; some serving for Firing to dress our Food, and to guard us against the Insults of Cold and Weather; some being of great Use in Physick, in Exchange and Commerce, in manuring and fertilizing our Lands, in dying and colouring, and ten thousand other Conveniences, too many to be particularly spoken of: Only there is one grand Use of one of these Strata or Beds, that cannot easily be omitted, and that is, those subterraneous Strata of Sand, Gravel, and laxer Earth that admit of, and facilitate the Passage of the sweet Waters[d], and may probably be the Colanders whereby they are sweetened, and then at the same time also convey’d to all Parts of the habitable World, not only through the temperate and torrid Zones, but even the farthest Regions of the frozen Poles.
That these Strata are the principal Passages of the sweet Fountain-Waters, is, I think not to be doubted, considering that in them the Waters are well known to pass, and in them the Springs are found by those that seek for them. I say, the principal Passages, because there are other subterraneous Guts and Chanels, Fissures and Passages, through which many Times the Waters make their way.
Now that which in a particular manner doth seem to me to manifest a special Providence of God in the repositing these watery Beds is, that they should be dispersed all the World over, into all Countries, and almost all Tracts of Land: That they should so entirely, or for the most part, consist of lax, incohering Earth, and be so seldom blended with other impervious Moulds, or if they are so, it is commonly but accidentally; and that they are interposed between the other impervious Beds, and so are as a Prop and Pillar to guard them off, and to prevent their sinking in and shutting up the Passages of the Waters.
The Time when those Strata were laid, was doubtless at the Creation, when God said (Gen. i. 9.) Let the Waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one Place, and let the dry Land appear; or else at the Deluge, if, with some sagacious Naturalists, we suppose the Globe of Earth to have been dissolved by the Flood[e]. At that Time (whatever it was) when the terraqueous Globe was in a chaotick State, and the earthy Particles subsided, then those several Beds were in all Probability reposited in the Earth, in that commodious Order in which they now are found; and that, as is asserted, according to the Laws[f] of Gravity.