266 Mr. De Luc on Mr. BakeweW s 



friend Baron Von Reder, who was at that time captain general 

 of the mines, in which he accompanied me himself, making me 

 observe many particulars which I could not have discovered 

 without him, in those dark underground passages, down to above 

 1400 feet. He made me in particular observe the proofs that 

 the veins were Jissiires in the strata, produced by imequal sub- 

 sidence of the sides after the fracture, which inequality was 

 shown by the want of corresjiondence of the same strata on the 

 opposite sides of the vein; making me observe some places where 

 there was above twenty feet difference in the level of tlie same 

 strata on the opposite sides of the veins. A clear proof that 

 these openings or jps-ures in the strata were produced by some 

 catastrophe, in which, after the Jissure, one side had subsided 

 more than the other. 



With respect to the process of filling 7/p these cavities, he 

 gave me a proof of a succession in that operation, by the dif- 

 ference of the metallic content of the same gangne: he showed 

 me in particular some recesses, or cavities, on the side of the vein, 

 incomparably richer than the other parts, which he had caused 

 to be shut up by doors, in order to keep them for the time when 

 the vein was hardly rich enough to pay the wages of the miners ; at 

 which times he permitted them to extract some of that rich ore, 

 to make an average of the yearly product ; as these mines are the 

 common property of companies, who are to maintain the miners 

 at all times witii the same wages, be the product of the mines 

 more or less. 



From these observations it was that I wrote a paper in the 

 same French journal, which contained one of M.Werner's, in 

 which he assigned the same origin to the metallic veins. It was 

 therefore very interesting for me to observe with liim the mineral 

 country of Freyherg, in which he was also director of the mines. 

 1 wrote to him from Dresden, my intended visit; he was so good 

 as to come himself to meet me at Dresden, and I spent some 

 days very usefully and agreeably at FrcyOerg, making many ex- 

 cursions in that very interesting mineral field, which observations 

 I have related in my Travels : but I shall confine myself here to 

 my subject, that of the formation of the mineral veins, and the 

 production of the gangue m iho^e. fissures oi the. strata. For 

 which purpose I shall copv what I describe from p. 448 of the 

 first volume of those Travels. 



" On the side of the valley in which flows the small river 

 Mulda, M. Werner made me observe several tittle veins, which 

 having been broken in the catastrophe whence is resulted the 

 faZ/e?/ itself, most evidently have been formed m fssures an- 

 terior in date lo the formation of the valley. Many of these 

 fissures unite below in a single one. In the part here exposed 



to 



