crystallized Bodies conlahied in Lava. o\ 



tion having vomited out by its crater an innumerable multi- 

 tude of isolated crystals ? 



These naturalists were perfectly right, who remarked that 

 the Jeucites and pyroxene- schorls are crystals which do not 

 exist in the beds we are able to see ; and they are right also 

 in drawing the conclusion from it, that these substances 

 would have been for ever unknown to us, if the volcanic 

 eruptions, in bringing them to light, had not made us ac- 

 quainted with them. M. Fleuriau de Bellevue thinks that 

 i\\[S '^s. a sitppositian. Nothing, however, can be more true 

 than the observation, and nothing is more natural than the 

 inference drawn from it. 



** We have seen," he continues, " that no example what- 

 ever proves that the aqueous solutions ever formed, or could 

 ibrm, rocks similar to primitive rocks ; and that fire, on the 

 contrary, presents us with products every day, which are not 

 only analogous to them, but even identical." 



We see, on the contrary, ttiat the productions of fire have 

 only an apparent, but no real reseniblance to the primitive^ 

 or, to speak more preciselv. to the primordial rocks. The 

 volcanic fires, any more than those of our furnaces, have 

 never produced, and, never will produce, any thing similar, 

 because the primoidial beds do not owe their origin to fire. 



Neither can aqueous solutions form any such strata; they 

 were formed by precipitations in the primordial fluid at epochs 

 •near to the time of the origin of the globe, and every thing 

 shows that they are not formed at present ; the water of the 

 (modern ocean does not now contain the elements necessary 

 -for this purpose, it is now entirely devoid of them. The 

 slime of rivers, which it has been thought would form 

 them, does not reach the bottom of the sea; the tides drive 

 it back and retain it at the mouths of the rivers, where 

 there are daily fresh additions made to the first shores of 

 icontinents. 



I shall here repeat a remark I have frequently made. 

 These additions are so little to be compared with the ex- 

 tent of the seas, ihit they cannot produce any sensible 

 change in their level. These alluvia of rivers have been often 

 quoted and mistaken for n^onmncnls of the retreat of the sea. 

 D a By 



