44 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 16Q5. 



surface of the earth, where part of it issues forth in vapour, ascends into the 

 atmosphere, and is returned back again in rain, &c. the rest is condensed or 

 collected, and sent forth in springs and rivers ; the several circumstances of 

 which he considers and accounts for, as also the final cause of this distributioa 

 of water to the surface of the earth ; that this subterranean heat is the cause of 

 earthquakes, the many strange phaenomena of which he relates, showing 

 whence each proceeds ; that volcanos, such as ^tna and Vesuvius, are nothing 

 but eruptions or discharges of this subterranean fire ; and that the thermae or 

 hot-springs also owe their heat entirely unto it. In the latter section of this 

 part he treats of the universality of the deluge ; shows where that mighty 

 volume of water which overflowed the earth in the days of Noah is now con- 

 cealed ; inquires what time of the year the deluge began : in what order, and at 

 what apertures the water of the abyss was brought out upon the earth, as also 

 how it retreated back again. 



In the 4th part he treats of the origin and formation of metals and minerals, 

 and shows that these were all dissolved at the deluge as well as stone, marble, 

 and the like, and that all metallic and mineral nodules whatever, both those 

 which are in rude lumps, such as the common pyrites, flints, agates, onyxes, 

 pebbles, jaspers, cornelians, and the like, and those which are of a more regu- 

 lar and observable shape, such as the selenites, belemnites, and mineral coral, 

 were all amassed and formed during the time that the water covered the earth ; 

 and gives an account of their varieties, mixtures, colours, and figures, parti- 

 cularly of the ores of metals, flint, spar, vitriol, and other minerals that resem- 

 ble the shells of echini, conchae, cochlege, and other shells ; for which reason 

 they have been called echinitse, conchitae, cochlitae ; showing that these bodies 

 were formed and moulded in the cavities of those shells which they so resemble, 

 and by what means. That at the general subsidence metals and minerals, as 

 well those which were thus amassed into lumps, as those which continued 

 asunder and in single corpuscles, sunk down to the bottom along with sand, 

 coal, marl, &c. and so were lodged in the strata which the sand, &c. consti- 

 tuted. That all the metallic and mineral matter, which is now found in the 

 fissures or perpendicular intervals of the strata, was originally lodged in single 

 particles among the sand, &c. in the bodies of those strata, having been 

 detached and drawn thence by little and little by the water, which continually 

 pervades the strata in its passage from the abyss to those fissures, and so on to 

 the surface of the earth ; with an account of the minerals and ores of metals 

 which lie in these fissures, and particularly of the formed ones, e. gr. of several 

 sorts of stalactilae, the iron-rhombs, tin-grains, mundic-grains, crystallized 

 native salt, alum, vitriol, and sulphur; as also tlie gems found here, as crystal. 



