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estand most obscure fossils. God loves symmetry) 

 gracefulness, elegance, and variety, and distributes 

 them for his complacency as well as glory, limits them 

 not to plants and animals, and open day.light, but like 

 a great master habitually impartsthein to all his works, 

 though in the deepest ocean, and 111 the most secret 

 parts of the earth. 



9. Although fissures are the natural result of a 

 moistened and mixed congeries of matter, passing by 

 approximation of parts into a state of solidity, we 

 are by no means to conclude them useless, or the 

 \vorks of chance. No, the great Architect, who con. 

 trived the whole, determined the several parts of his 

 scheme so to operate, as that one useful effect should 

 become the beneficial cause of another. Hence it 

 happens that matter could not contract itself into solid 

 larfre masses, without leaving fissures between them : 

 and yet the fissures are as necessary and useful as 

 the strata through which they pass. These uro the 

 drains which carry off the redundant moisture from 

 the earth, which but for them, would be too full of 

 fens and bogs for animals to live, or plants to thrive 

 on. Through these fissures the rain which sinks 

 beneath the channels of rivers, not having the advan- 

 tage of that conveyance above ground, returns into 

 the sea, bringing the salts and mineral juices of the 

 earth into the ocean, enabling it to supply the firma- 

 ment with proper and sufficient moisture, and preserv- 

 ing that vast body, the sea, wholesome, fit for fish to 

 live in, and sailors to navigate. 



In these fissures the several ingredients which form 

 the richest loads, by the continual passing of waters, 

 and the menstrua of metals, are educed out of the ad- 

 jacent strata, collected and conveniently lodged in a 

 narrow channel, much to the advantage of those who 

 search for and pursue them. For if minerals were 

 more dispersed, and scattered thinly in the body of 

 the strata, the trouble of finding and getting at metals 

 (.those necessary instruments of art and commerce^ aud 

 M 4 



