390 ON MINERAL VEINS. 



When geology shall have forgotten all that Freyberg 

 taught, it will have a clear field. 



But if there can be one man requiring another 

 answer, the precipitation of rocks from solution 

 in water is at variance with the laws of Chemistry, 

 and the objection would still he fatal, though the 

 rocks had been produced in some other manner, and 

 the production of veirfs alone was thus to be ex- 

 plained. Even if the power of this imagined solvent 

 were granted as to their materials, it must be proved 

 why the minerals of veins were not deposited every 

 where alike, why they were not deposited in strata, 

 why they were directed exclusively to fissures, why to 

 a few of these in distant and select places, and why 

 limited also to partial spots in the same vein. 



If these objections are unanswerable, the few ar- 

 guments from facts adduced in support of it, will 

 require very little discussion. If many of the sub- 

 stances found in veins are the produce of watery so- 

 lution, there are many others which, as far as we yet 

 know, cannot be produced in this manner, as I shall 

 hereafter show. It has been argued that the minerals 

 of veins are deposited in layers parallel to their sides, 

 precisely as ought to have happened on this hypo- 

 thesis. In the first place, the fact is not so, except 

 occasionally; as they are frequently congregated in 

 irregular lumps, or dispersed among the other mate- 

 rials, or wanting for considerable spaces, or found 

 lining the insides of cavities. Neither of these things 

 should occur, according to the hypothesis ; and espe- 

 cially, there could be no cavities on such a system of 

 deposition from above, and the layers of minerals 

 ought rather to be parallel to the horizon than to the 

 walls of the vein. The argument derived from the 

 presence of rounded materials in veins is worthless.. 



