in organic and inorganic Bodies. 167 



minerals as I either had at hand or could readily obtain, 

 including several of the simple earths and metals, with many 

 of their combinations. 



Rocks of all ages, including those in which organic remains 

 have never been found, yielded the molecules in abundance. 

 Their existence was ascertained in each of the constituent 

 minerals of granite, a fragment of the Sphinx being one of the 

 specimens examined. 



To mention all the mineral substances in which I have 

 found these molecules, would be tedious ; and I shall confine 

 myself in this summary to an enumeration of a few of the 

 most remarkable. These were both of aqueous and igneous 

 origin, as travertine, stalactites, lava, obsidian, pumice, vol- 

 canic ashes, and meteorites from various localities*. Of metals 

 I may mention manganese, nickel, plumbago, bismuth, anti- 

 mony, and arsenic. In a word, in every mineral which I 

 could reduce to a powder, sufficiently fine to be temporarily 

 suspended in water, I found these molecules more or less 

 copiously ; and in some cases, more particularly in siliceous 

 crystals, the whole body submitted to examination appeared 

 to be composed of them. 



In many of the substances examined, especially those of 

 a fibrous structure, as asbestus, actinolite, tremolite, zeolite, 

 and even steatite, along with the spherical molecules, other 

 corpuscules were found, like short fibres somewhat monili- 

 form, whose transverse diameter appeared not to exceed that 

 of the molecule, of which they seemed to be primary com- 

 binations. These fibrils, when of such length as to be pro- 

 bably composed of not more than four or five molecules, and 

 still more evidently when formed of two or three only, were 

 generally in motion, at least as vivid as that of the simple 

 molecule itself; and which from the fibril often changing its 

 position in the fluid, and from its occasional bending, might be 

 said to be somewhat vermicular. 



In other bodies which did not exhibit these fibrils, oval 

 particles of a size about equal to two molecules, and which 

 were also conjectured to be primary combinations of these, 

 were not unfrequently met with, and in motion generally more 

 vivid than that of the simple molecule ; their motion consist- 

 ing in turning usually on their longer axis, and then often 

 appearing to be flattened. Such oval particles were found to 

 be numerous and extremely active in white arsenic. 



As mineral bodies which had been fused contained the 



* I have since found the molecules in the sand-tubes, formed by light- 

 ning, from Drig in Cumberland. 



moving 



