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V. SUMMARY OF RESULTS— 
A review of the summary of results brought together in 
this modest inquiry, may be fairly required at this stage of 
recital of numerous facts, more or less in relation to the sub- 
ject. The real point then at issue is something subjective, being 
a consideration, and involving a consideration concerning force, 
and force is subjective, not objective. We see two kinds of 
forces arrayed in action against each other. Ina bit of granite, 
consisting of three substances, or rather two, viz: quartz and 
felspar—for the third essential, the mica, is often small in size 
and quantity—we have substances or bodies, indued with the 
usual properties of matter, cohesion and elasticity. Acting 
against these and striving with them is the form of energy, a 
mighty force, known as heat. In the principal component of 
granite, so strong is the quartz element in the force of cohesion, 
that it will not melt before the flame of an ordinary blow-pipe, 
and it is only when a jet of oxyhydrogen gas is brought to bear 
upon it forcibly, or when subjected to heat in the reverbatory 
gas furnaces of the laboratory that it runs, and the force of co- 
hesion relaxing, the quartz gives way and loses its rigidity. 
The other essential components may be sensibly regarded 
on the contrary as one substance, for our purpose. This is 
the felspar, an alkaline mineral. What occurs most frequently 
and extensively in granites is Orthoclase, the potash felspar, 
which is the weakest component in the granite, and has so little 
cohesion and power of resistance, that it yields in the presence 
of heat at a low degree of temperature. Chemically the alkalis 
are weak and unstable. One word as to the two, potash and 
- soda, formerly called the fixed alkalis, and so called merely to 
conveniently distinguish them from the volatile alkali, ammonia. 
Both of the former, the metals of the alkalies and their oxides 
are weak and unstable, soft, easily fusible, volatile at higher 
temperatures and combine very easily with oxygen, decompose 
water at all temperatures, and form strongly basic oxides which 
are very soluble in water. In fact, in combination with oxygen 
their state of chemical combination is very feeble. When we 
know that in general, heat produces a direct and immediate 
