23 



MINERALS AND SHELLS. 



Every branch of natural history has its peculiar fascinations. The only one not pleasing 

 to me is mineralogy, perhaps the most wonderful of all, if one can be more so than another. 

 In it there is a rich store of occupation for the mind ; but the want of form, and also of colour, 

 with few exceptions, render it little attractive to me. Even the precious stones are, in their 

 natural state, without definite form, and their hidden beauty is only brought into view by the 

 skill of the lapidary, so that in reality these are hardly natural productions when valued as either 

 curiosities or ornaments. But when their substance came into existence, and how? Who 

 can tell? 



How wonderfully the solid portions of the world have been formed; all kinds of substances 

 seem to have been required to make it perfect. The antediluvian gigantic lizards, and even 

 their dung, seem to have been called into requisition for the purpose of making solid land of 

 such peculiar character as Nature wanted for some of her purposes ; their fossil remains 

 prove this. The lime also, collected during their growth by the inhabitants of shells and 

 corallines, seems equally to have been utilized, and has been petrified so as to form rocks of 

 some peculiar kind Nature required. We find this proved by the forms of the shells in the 

 hard rocks which retain them, but their substance altered in consistence. Trees also, and all 

 other vegetable matter, in fact all things within reach at the time these rocks were formed, 

 seem to have been required and utilized to form these now solid portions of the world. 



Wondering only, and not even considering scientifically about rocks, what are we to think 

 of the deposits of coal alone, and the thickness of the seams? If we try to conceive the 



