On the Basaltes of Saxony. 59 



ish colour, as produced by fire. In the time of Adrian the 

 Egyptian statues were repaired and imitated with certain 

 kinds of compact lava, which had nearly the colour, the 

 grain, and hardness, of basaltes. Basaltes, then, was con- 

 sidered as compact and prismatic lava; and foreign mine- 

 ralogists received this opinion on vague analogies, and at 

 tirst without examination. Let us therefore do justice to 

 Dolomieu, who from fragments of a rock, the position of 

 which is unknown, conjectured in part what could have 

 scarcely been determined by thirty years discussion in re- 

 gard to the basaltes of Germany ; and let these abuses of 

 analogy, inseparable from the progress of the human mind, 

 explain better the errors into which respectable naturalists 

 may have fallen, than a fondness for the marvellous, of 

 which the author of the memoir accuses those who do not 

 participitate in his sentiments; as before him, and in si- 

 milar circumstances, M. Noze was not afraid of making 

 the same accusation against the celebrated and judicious 

 Saussure. 



From these considerations, Dolomieu wished that a more 

 precise nomenclature might put an end to the numerous 

 ambiguities which the word basalf.es had occasioned. He 

 confined this denomination within its antient meaning, and 

 extended the name of lava to that even which affected pris- 

 matic and globular forms, when the fire had imprinted on 

 it the character of its action. Being at length convinced,, 

 by long observation of the principal volcanoes in Europe, 

 that a stone may have been in a state of fusion without expe- 

 riencing in its contexture any sensible alteration, he was of 

 opinion that nothing but actual inspection could dissipate 

 the doubts on this subject ; and by readily allowing that the 

 black prismatic trapp of Saxony, as well as that of Sweden 

 and Scotland, are products of the moist way, he asserted 

 that those of the Vivarais and Sicily were productions of 

 fire. 



Such, thirteen years ago, was the opinion of the ablest 

 pf our geologists ; a naturalist who spent a part of his life 

 amidst volcanoes. He published it in the Journal de Phy- 

 sique for the year 1/90, in consequence of the accounts, 

 transmitted to him of the labours and ideas of the most ce- 

 lebrated mineralogists of Germany. If it be true that this* 

 grand observer, brought up, in some manner, in the domain 

 of fire, . extended the limits of it too far, even when he ima- 

 gined that he had confined them within too narrow a com- 

 pass, can we believe that his adversaries, placed in a quite 

 opposite situation, should have been less carried away by 



the 



