376 M. Berzelius's Bemarks on 



opinion as chemist, as to call on me, to state, in this Report, 

 how I view, in a chemical point of view, the elucidations he 

 has attempted. 



With expressions of unfeigned esteem for this meritorious 

 geologist, I must at same time regret that I cannot concur in 

 his views of the subject. The power he refers to as the ope- 

 rating cause certainly exists, and, as such, must assist, like the 

 other powers in matter, in geological operations, but it plays 

 there, according to all appearance, a very inferior role, or it 

 has a very small energy, and the circumstances under which it 

 operates are quite circumscribed. These circumstances consist 

 in a liquid, or at least a soft state in the masses, arising either 

 from the power of moisture or of heat. There are certainly 

 cases where it operates in bodies of a low degree of solidity, 

 that is where the force of cohesion is weak, for example, when 

 the yellow crystals of ioduret of mercury after being slightlv 

 scratched become again red and undergo a change in the re- 

 lative positions of the particles ; and when certain crystals 

 pass in their interior from one fundamental form to another ; 

 but in this, however, there is no transference of particles from 

 one place to another ; the external contours remain, and the 

 changed crystals, which have undergone any internal change, 

 retain their edges and angles equally as sharp as before. The 

 operations are thus confined to the nearest contact, and ai'e^ 

 accompanied by no absolute change of place in the solid 

 bodies. No circumstances occur to prove that this power can 

 ^york in another way in geological phenomena, namely, at a 

 greater difference of distance, or make a greater resistance, 

 than in chemical operations of a small extent. Glass which 

 is kept soft in a heated state for some few hours, changes to 

 Reaumur's porcelain, that is, the particles ai'e subject to the 

 ]jower of crystallization to a certain but imperfect degree, but 

 Ihe glass in the Roman cups and bottles, preserved to our time, 

 and in the glass pearls from the mumniies of Thebes, are, after 

 being preserved for thousands of years, still glass. If, according 

 to this hypothesis, clay-slate, by the process of granitification, 

 is formed into granite and syenite, and sandstone, by the same 

 eheurical powers, into porphyry, while the component parts, 



