450 BEVIEWS — LAKES SUPERIOR AND IIUEON. 



times to be a sort of cementation, if, indeed, it be not the state of 

 combination of detritus, of desintegration of primitive rocks which 

 have arrived at the state of sandstone and greywacke." 



In another part of the Report, we find some still more astonishing 

 theories gravely set forth in elucidation of that vexed question, the 

 production of metallic veins. In order to avoid the charge of garbled 

 quotations, and as an example of our author's logic, and peculiar 

 treatment of his subject, we give the extract entire. We quote, as 

 Defore, from the authorized English version of the Eeport : — 



" Caloric is known to be a species of fluid which in certain bodies 

 generates electricity, and the smallest friction produces heat, and 

 therefore generates electricity. Electricity produces magnetism. 

 Metals are d'stributed in the direction of the electric and magnetic 

 currents as they assume a position in relation to each other depend- 

 ing on their specific gravity, their bulk and the force to which they 

 are subjected being the same. 



" As the terrestrial globe turns from west to east, and the sun's 

 rays therefore travel from east to west, the friction of the atmos- 

 pheric air, the production of electricity, and the generation of the 

 magnetic fluid towards the north and south poles, cause minerals to 

 assume a direction consentaneous to the influence of these several 

 forces. Taking for granted the earliest epoch of the globe, when its 

 nature must have been homogeneous, all mineral matters must neces- 

 sarily, after certain periods of electro-magnetic action, assume a 

 position which is the result of the perpetual action of these two 

 forces ; and in those periods the globe must have undergone a de- 

 composition more or less homogeneous according to the intensity of 

 these forces, when once the different kinds of matter have found 

 their relative positions according to their power of attraction or re- 

 pulsion under the influence of the electro-chemical, magnetic and 

 other fluids. 



"The body of the globe has therefore undergone a change in its 

 mode of resistance in certain directions, and it is probable that 

 mountains must have been formed either by the force of expansion in 

 gases produced by internal heat, occasioned by the action of elec- 

 tricity and evolved during the combination and decomposition of 

 bodies, or in other places by the action of depressing causes, some- 

 times even by their own weight, owing at one time to the disappear- 

 ance of certain bodies, at another to a certain condition of atomic 

 separation, previously incident to rocks ; and the formation of moun- 

 tains must therefore have their greatest dimensions of length in the 

 same direction ; nothing could turn them aside ; for the matters 



