ed 
Miscellanies. 
ingly low and the work performed by laborers who live on little. 
This secondary may be considered as a proof if ever the veins were 
filled, that they must have been filled from the surface, for it is diffi- 
cult to conceive how, in a primitive range, the secondary could be 
ejected from below ; ; it has been considered as a geological fact, that 
metallic veins can have no dependence or connection with volcanos, 
a 5 eanenuae f many original natural methods of opera- 
wich make us cautious in restricting nature to any exclusive 
ting. Our primitive mountains in the north have iron. in 
seatets, but the precious metals have, as yet, been rarely found 3° 
nor are there any modern volcanic rocks. The same may be ob- 
served in the north of Europe. Sweden, and the north of Ger- 
many, have rarely silver and gold, and no modern voleanic rocks, 
whereas, in Saxony and Hungary and Spain, there are both precious 
metals and volcanic rocks—and on the southern continent of: Amer- » 
ica, there seems to be a proportion between the gigantic volcanic 
form <i = the enya of the precious metals. _ If we sup- 
B. yulsi uakes eS all precede the erup- 
tio 1e s t and cracked t So as 
to give space to iH jafibaficn of Tren. veins, and the pr scious riietals 
if converted into vapor, would penetrate through chinks that would 
not permit. Java to pass; this vapor meeting with the secondary that 
wa _filling the vein from the surface, might form a mixture such as 
Pcs we d in most of the veinstones; this conjecture will not support 
- the fashionable theory of the sthteal fire, for there would be no good 
reason why the cracks in our northern mountains were not as near 
the melted mass, and therefore as liable to be filled with the vapor 
of the precious metals as the rocks of the inter-tropical countries: 
ilediniws and magnesium. Lieut. W. W. Mather, of the 
iii Academy, West Point, has succeeded in obtaining the chlo- 
rides of aluminium and magnesium, and in decomposing them by po- 
tassium, so as to obtain the metallic base both of alumina and of mag- 
nesia.. The magnesium that he obtained, had not a distinct metallic 
appearance until i it was burnished, , but both it and the aluminium were 
combustible when heated in the air. + 7 
Lieut. Mather was so good as to enclose to usa portion both of the 
ium and peacrarartt Whose mx metallic appearance is quite dis- 
tinet ;. the color of the aluminium. is light grey and in spots tin white. 
chloride of magnesiun | obtained by him has exactly the appe@t- 
& . 
. 
