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102 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1704. 



Now seeing that the great number of salts extracted from the stone are of so 

 obstinate and tenacious a figure, that nothing but fire can divide them, and 

 that they are such inflexible bodies, that they cannot be dissolved in water ; we 

 may well conclude, that the grains of sand which compose such stones, were 

 not only soft at the time of their coalition or union with each other, but that 

 at the same time there intervened a very inflexible fixed salt, instead of mortar, 

 between the particles of sand ; unless you chuse to say, that each particle of 

 salt in some degree consists of such fixed salts. 



After this I took a piece of hearth stone, called Benthenier stone, because 

 found in quarries in the county of Benthem : this stone was so soft, that I 

 could easily crumble it between my fingers ; and afterwards viewing it with one 

 of my glasses, could perceive nothing but particles of sand, without the least 

 smooth side, or regular angles ; and it seemed to me, that this sand had ac- 

 quired a sort of conglutination, or was grown into a solid substance, which we 

 call stone, a long time after it had been nothing but sand, and its particles had 

 been worn and collided against each other. My reason is, because this sand, 

 that had been lately stone, was as full of small holes and breaches as any sand 

 I ever saw ; and in viewing them, they seemed to be composed of thousands 

 of smaller particles ; and that some of them were of a triangular, others of an 

 exact flat quadrangular figure; and when I observed these sands at rest, I 

 judged that the original shape of many of them were hexangular, and many 

 were pointed like diamonds, which points issued out from smooth flat sides. 



I took a piece of alabaster stone, and having viewed it several times, I ob- 

 served, after breaking or beating it very small, that the little particles were very 

 thin and jjellucid, and their figure a long and flat square, with two acute angles 

 and two obtuse ones ; and though I saw among them some others that were not 

 quite so regular, yet I supposed that the exactness and regularity of their 

 figures had been lost in the violent separating them from one another. The 

 particles were for the most part so exceedingly small, that they could hardly be 

 seen through my best microscope ; but some of them of a larger figure, ap- 

 peared to be composed of very thin particles lying upon each other. Now, on 

 viewing those particles of the stone that were as large as grains of sand, I 

 found that each of them was composed of several thousands of smaller particles, 

 whose shape I could not discover ; and when I made a little bit of the stone 

 red hot, and dropped it into the water, it dissolved into a white substance as fine 

 as meal or flour, losing all its transparency; and each particle, though its 

 figure had been an oblong square, was now composed of such small particles, 

 that it was impossible to perceive any shape it had. 



After this, I took a small piece of mineral stone, brought from Sumatra, 



