Hutton concluded that:

- Earth’s interior has an immense temperature.

- Earth’s heat provides the energy to create new rocks.

- Erosion of land by water and air creates materials such as silt, soil and small rock particles which are carried into the sea, where layers of these materials are deposited over long time scales.

- As the layers gather, the earliest layers become buried ever more deeply in the earth, where they are turned into stone by the earth’s heat.

- Stone is eventually uplifted to form new land.

- The new land is eroding over a long period of time, beginning the cycle again.