Intelligence and Miscellanies. 385 



utility becomes the scale of measurement of value, when all 

 nations may agree to spend their unoccupied exertions in 

 making a great excavation, as far towards the centre of the 

 earth, as their means will permit them to go, when something 

 may be discovered within the evidence of our senses, on 

 which we can build conjectures that have some foundation 

 in analogy. 



Geology. — The vibration of the pendulum, seems the fa- 

 vorite motion of all speculative opinions, beyond the reach 

 of our senses or the control of facts. While Werner gave 

 the tone to geology, water was the only agent that nature 

 dared to make use of, in her changes of the surface of our 

 globe. Since his death, the Vulcanists seem to take their 

 revenge, and in their purpose to bend the hoop straight, 

 may perhaps go as far in the contrary direction ; although 

 the Neptunian marks of organic remains, will keep them 

 within certain bounds, on all above the primitive, which Vvill 

 be smelted, roasted and liquified, as the only field of experi- 

 ment they can occupy ; the primitive having this in common 

 with the volcanic, that no organic remains have been yet 

 found, either in it or under it ; this important fact may ap- 

 pear to give them latitude for conjecture. In my maturer 

 years, I find myself averse to change, and do not think I 

 could better the conjecture at the end of my small essay on 

 the formation of rocks, that analogy might perhaps dispose us 

 to place hornblende, greenstone, sienite, porphyry and gran- 

 ite, among the volcanic rocks, &c. One thing I thought I ob- 

 served in more than one country, that rocks which by resem- 

 blance might be considered of volcanic origin, are found al- 

 ternating with transition, secondary and alluvial, so that it 

 would appear that both fire and water have been the agents 

 that nature has employed to overlay the primitive, with all we 

 find at present above it, and it would appear from the nature 

 of the rocks ejected without being fused, that the seat of 

 volcanic action is either in or below the primitive. Yet we 

 dare scarce venture to limit natural agencies to one mode of 

 producing any effect ; for instance, earthquakes have been 

 supposed to be connected with volcanic action, although the 

 two or three shocks lately felt in this western country, seem 

 to have arisen from other causes, as there is no appearance 

 either of ancient or recent volcanos, in any part of the basin 

 of the Mississippi, short of the Rocky Mountains. The effects 

 as far as we know, have deranged nothing but the alluvial, 

 Vol. XV.~JVo. 2. 24 



