142 Anahjses of Books. [Aii6. 



for a knowledge of which I am myself entirely indebted to the 

 anonymous author already referred to in Ilees's Cyclopaedia ; and a 

 circumstance, 1 may add, which, unless it be scrupulously attended 

 to, is calculated to render all experiments made with a view to 

 ascertain the temperature of blood, after it has been drawn from 

 the vessels, altogether inconclusive. At the same time, I cannot 

 help observing, though with the utmost deference to one so much 

 more familiar with chemical details than I am, that, taking Dr. 

 Davy's experiments as they are, they rather seem to me to warrant 

 an opposite conclusion to that which he has drawn from them; and 

 that, upon the whole, they rather tend to confirm than to disprove 

 the extrication of caloric during the coagulation of the blood. 



I am, Sir, yours, cS:c 



John Gordon. 



Article XIV. 



Analyses of Books. 



An Account of the Basalts of Saxony, with Observations on the 

 origin of Basalt in general. By J. F. Daubuisson, Member of 

 the National Institute, and one of the principal engineers to the 

 Board of Mines in France. Translated, with notes, by P. 

 Neill, F. R.S. E. and F. L. S. Secretary to the Wernerian 

 Society. With a Map of the Saxon Erzgebiirge, from Petri. 

 Edinburgh, Constable and Co. 1814 ; London, Longman and 

 Co. One Vol. 8vo. 



Tins book has been long well known to mineralogists. Mr. 

 Neill has conferred a favour on the British mineralogical public by 

 his translation of it. His notes are not numerous, but they are 

 judicious, and relate chiefly to Scotland, a country in which basalt 

 abounds, and which, in a mineralogical point of view, is very 

 interesting. The map is convenient and useful, and gives to the 

 present translation a superiority over the original work. 



Three opinions respecting the origin of basalt, and the minerals 

 that usually accompany it, as greenstone, and porphyry slate, have 

 long divided the geological public. One party, at the head of which 

 is Werner, consider this mineral to have had a similar origin with 

 the other rocks of which the crust of the earth is composed, that is 

 to say, to have been deposited from a liquid, which formerly 

 covered the whole surface of the earth. Another party, headed by 

 Voight and by Dolomieu, &c. conceive basalt to be lava, and all 

 basaltic mountains to be the remains of extinct volcanoes While, 

 a third party, headed by Dr. Mutton, of Edinburgh, and consisting 

 chiefly of Sir James Hall and Mr. Playfair, with two or three young 

 proselytes, maintain that basalt was fused by the central fire of the 



