28 Mineral Resources of JYew York. fJuly 



machinery for manufactures and the reduction of the mineral pro- 

 ducts. 



We might proceed farther in the same train of thought, and 

 show still more fully that the business in which men engage, and by 

 which competence and wealth are attained, is determined and 

 controlled by the constitution of the country which they have 

 chosen for their residence; or, in other words, that its geological 

 formations, and its structure controls their affairs, excites and di- 

 rects their enterprises and opens before them the main sources 

 from which their wealth is drawn. Hence it is that men do not 

 choose before hand, and independently of circumstances, what they 

 will do, and what they will pursue, so often as may at first view 

 appear; but, they are rather following a lead which nature opens 

 before them in the circumstances and conditions in which they 

 may be placed. 



The earth is the great store-house from whence is drawn all 

 that is esteemed valuable and useful in this life; and although 

 much springs out of it by forces independent of man, still it is 

 rare that much can be appropriated and employed for his use and 

 benefit without labor and the exercise of his mind upon it; and 

 in order to encourage his efforts and make it possible to secure 

 the greatest amount of good, order has been observed in the dis- 

 tribution of the most important materials, those which are re- 

 quired for his daily use and consumption. It is no part of our 

 present purpose to show the importance of order in the distribu- 

 tion of useful materials, or to dwell upon the designs of Provi- 

 dence in thus furnishing what is required for sustenance in rela- 

 tions which may be known by observation, and which when once 

 discovered is an available fact for all future generations, and 

 w^hich in truth serve in the place of a principle to guide all farther 

 researches in the same channels of inquiry, but simply as an enun- 

 ciation of what is true, and what at the same time gives impor- 

 tance to investigations whose objects are the discovery of useful 

 materials in the bowels of the earth. It is certainly a magnificent 

 fact that it is so; and though it is what we ought to have ex- 

 pected a priori, yet, it is one which we have been very slow in 



