of the Mineral Kingdom.’* 261 
ocean was really to be forced up by subterraneous fire to the 
height of our mountains, we might expect to find as great’ con- 
fusion and disorder, and marks of the ruins of a world, among 
Dr. Hutton’s mountains as among Dr. Burnet’s; but I have 
shewed, in my Natural History of Mountains, that the strata of 
our real mountains are as regular as in any of the plains. 
In truth, I have not scen such regularity of the strata any 
where else as among the highland mountains of Lochaber, which 
are the highest in Britain. The local examples, which I have 
pointed out there, will evince the truth of this assertion to any 
who wish to ascertain the fact. 
Our author lays great stress upon the phenomena of minerai 
veins, and of the ores aud other. substances found in them, to 
support and confirm his fiery system: but, in truth, every ap- 
pearance of mineral veins, and of their contents, point to water 
with a distinct and legible index, as the chief agent in their for- 
mation, &e, which subject I have investigated and explained in 
my Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom. 
Upon the supposition of our author’s Theory of Mineral Veins 
being true, al! our veins should be wide above, and narrower be- 
low, which is not found true in experience, very many of them 
being exceeding strait and narrow for many fathoms next the 
surface, which are very wide further down; and if this Theory 
was true, every substance found in these veins should be the 
hardest in all the howe!s of the earth, because the force and 
violence of the subterrancous fire would have a much freer pas- 
sage through these open fissures, than through solid unbroken 
strata of several thousand miles of thickness; bat this, in truth, 
is not the case, the inside of many of our mineral veins being 
exceeding soft and argillaceous. 
Again, upon the supposition of the contents of our mineral 
veins being formed by metallic steams, forced up from below by 
the influence of subterraneous fire, our mineral ores should be ail 
pure and unmixed with earthy or stony matter, which is not 503 
and moreover, upon this hypothesis, no metallic or mineral ore 
would be found out of the cavities of mineral veins; but neither 
is this the case ; on the contrary, every mineralist knows very 
well, that gold, silver, cepper, tin, lead, iron, &c, are commonly 
found, in a dispersed state, in large and smaller grains, flowers 
and masses, throughut the body of many of our rocks aud strata, 
intimately mingled with their composition as one of the com- 
ponent parts of such rocks and strata. 
Gold is generally tound in grains of various sizes, mixed in the 
composition of many rocks and strata, and the origin of gold-dust 
is from the decomposition of the superticies of these rocks, which 
is washed down by the floods, and deposited in the beds of nny 
rat 
