FORMATION OF PRIMITIVE MOUNTAINS. 335 

 NOTE D, p. 19. 



FORMATION OF PRIMITIVE MOUNTAINS. 



Mitscherlich, in a memoir read before the Royal Aca- 

 demy of Berlin, but not yet published, enters fully into 

 the illustration of the igneous origin of mountains, espe- 

 cially those of the primitive class, deducible from his 

 experiments on the formation of minerals by fusion. 

 As the view is interesting, we shall here give a short 

 sketch of it. 



Have the primitive mountains of our globe, whose 

 form necessarily supposes a fluid state, been dissolved 

 in water; or has the temperature of our earth been 

 raised to such a degree, that the substances of which 

 our primitive mountains are formed have become fluid ? 

 This question has been differently answered, and the 

 solutions given have been attempted to be supported in 

 proportion as the observation of geological facts, and 

 the inquiries instituted with reference to the chemical 

 combinations which compose the earth, have been deve- 

 loped. New observations, and the discovery of unknown 

 laws in chemistry and mineralogy, must, at the same 

 time, open a new field for speculation and observation 

 in geology. Of the discoveries of our own times, there 

 certainly is none which has exercised a greater influence 

 upon mineralogy than that of determinate proportions, 

 and especially the result of the researches of Berzelius, 

 that the chemical combinations which nature produces, 

 are formed according to the laws which he has discovered 



with regard to artificial combinations; a result which 



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