Thomas Burnet's Battleground of Time - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 55

such short shrift as historical documents, they hardly considered the issue at all,
and simply arranged the figure as any modern geologist would.
I stored this difference in the back of my mind, and appreciated its significance
only when I started thinking seriously about relationships between metaphors
of time. The rearranged vertical column is time's arrow of modern convention.
It reflects our dominant metaphor of time, and seems so "right" that we dismiss
Steno's own orientation as inconsequential, or as an odd arrangement
constrained by space available. But a study of Steno's text, and a general
appreciation of how early geologists treated time's arrow and cycle, proves that
Steno presented his version on purpose.
In telling the story of Tuscany, Steno did not confine his attention to narrative.
He also sought to develop a cyclical theory of the earth's history. The six
tableaux form two cycles of three, not a linear sequence. Each cycle passes
through the same three stages: deposition as a uniform set of layers, excavation
of vacuities within the strata, and collapse of the top strata into the eroded
spaces,
Figure 2.10
The geological history of Tuscany in Steno's original version, arranged
as two parallel columns.