276 



nig's workmen had washed out gold from the sands of the river Dela- 

 ware; and a French writer affirms that there is a trace of iiold in the 

 sands of the -Rhine. 



When we consider the uses to which this noble metal is providen- 

 tiall}^ adapted and wisely applied, we cannot but wonder at the appa- 

 rent waste or misplacement by which so much is irrecoverably lost ; 

 and, to all appearance, had as well not been made. Perhaps such 

 inscrutable mysteries in the realm of nature may help us to submit 

 to other difficulties in other parts of the Divine order and govern- 

 ment. Of this we may be confident, that the atoms of gold are ho- 

 mogeneously and equably dispersed through the clay or other matrix ; 

 but by what natural process, and for what final cause, these fine par- 

 ticles should be thus diffused, seems quite beyond the reach of human 

 philosophy. 



The paper thus offered, however deficient and practically unimpor- 

 tant, may afford a diversion of mind, for the moment, from the one 

 idea of the times upon which we have fallen. 



Professor Lesley remarked that the ores of zinc seemed 

 more closely allied, geologically, with alumina than with silica, 

 and were therefore by so much the further removed from gold, 

 the normal alliance of which is supposed to be with silica. 

 As all clays are made up chiefly of alumina and silica, derived 

 from the d,isintegration of tertiary, secondary, and primary 

 rocks in a long backward series of remanipulations, it should 

 not excite surprise if all clays, without exception, should yield 

 minute quantities of gold. And as all the primary metals 

 have gangues containing silica, which enters as an impurity 

 into the manufactured article, probably in the form of silicon, 

 it is likewise almost inevitable that gold should appear with it. 



