of the Mineral Kingdom.” (275 
fire, and its effects in the consolidation of the strata, by means 
of fusion beneath the waters of the ocean, is a singular hypo- 
thesis; but it is not altogether new. : 
Woodward and others have advanced the notions of central 
and subterraneous fires; and they also pretended to account for 
many of the phenomena of nature from the operations or effects 
of these imaginary fires: but I do not know that any of them 
before our author gave these fires the office of melting the earthy 
mass, in order to cement and consolidate our strata; though 
Ray conjectures, that mountains might be forced up by earth- 
quakes, and by the flatus of volcanic fire; but none, that I know 
of, before the Doctor, have given this imaginary central fire the 
‘olice of melting the cozy bed of the ocean, in order to reduce it 
-by fusion into solid rocks and strata. 
Our author’s abilities as a naturalist, and his chemical know- 
ledge, enable him to produce and reason upon many seeming 
facts to support and illustrate his hypothesis ; but, unluckily for 
this proposition, we see in little the very same natural effects 
“produced before our eyes without the application of visible fire, 
though not without the influence and effects of the elementary 
atmospherical fire. 
There is no room to doubt, that natural chemistry is more 
powerful, extensive, and various than the artificial. It is difficult 
to limit the powers and effects of variously combined mineral 
liquors, in dissolving part of various fossil bodies in their natural 
situations, in the bowels of the earth. One thing we are sure 
of,—that various terrene matters are in a dissolved or fluid state, 
anixed with the waters which percollate the pores and cranies of 
our rocks and strata. 
As an undeniable proof of this, we see numerous fossil hodies 
of various qualities and degrees of hardness formed and forming 
before our eyes, which are as well consolidated and cemented as 
if they had been fused by fire upon our-author’s plan of eemen- 
tation; and these, not in small and inconsiderable erystalliza- 
‘tions and stallaetites, but we see considerably large coneretions 
formed by a gradual accretion of matter-deposited by water. In 
some places, we see caverns of various degrees of extent and 
magnitude, some of which are almost, and others altogether 
filled up by a small flow of water, depositing particles of stony 
matter; and the bodies so formed are afterwards consolidated, in 
the course of no very long time, to degrees ot strength and in- 
duration equal to any of our rocks and strata. Mines recently 
worked are in many places so quickly choaked up by the forma- 
tion of various concretions, that we are often obliged to demolish 
them, to prevent their stopping up the passage altogether. 
{ have seen subterraneous mines or galleries, which were 
$2 worked 
