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path of experiments he would have found both the hardnefs and 

 tranfparency, of what he calls his primitive glafs, and thinks the 

 primitive fubftance of the globe, namely quartz^ to be altered in 

 a ftrong jieat with a lofs of 3 percent, of its weight, and that fo far 

 from having been a glafs, that it is abfolutely infufible. The lofs 

 of weight, he muft have fecn, could be afcribed to nothing elfe but 

 the lofs of its watery particles, and that therefore it muft have been 

 originally formed in water; he w'ould have found that ^ome felfpars 

 lofe 40 per cent, and others at leaft 2 per cent, by heat ; he would 

 have perceived that mica, which he thinks only an exfoliation of 

 quartz, to be in its compofition elTentially different. He certainly 

 found their cryftallization inexplicable, for he does not even attempt 

 to explain it. 



But waving this, and a multitude of other infuperable dif- 

 ficulties in his hypothefis, and adverting only to the folution he 

 thinks his theory affords, of the phcenomenon of the exiftence of 

 the bones of elephants, and the carcafc of a rhinoceros in Siberia, 

 I fay it is defedlive even in that refpeit. For allowing his fup- 

 pofition that Siberia was at any time of a temperature fo fuited 

 to the conftitution of thefe animals that they might live in it, 

 yet the remains lately found in that country cannot be fuppofed 

 to belong to animals that ever lived in it : 



ift, Becaufe though they are found at the diftance of feveral 

 hundred miles from the fea, yet they arc furrounded by genuine 

 marine vegetables, which fhews that they were brought thither 

 together with thofe vegetables. 



2dly, 



