GEOLOGY. G93 



tants of the mountains have always kept us from seeing a 

 great part of the treasures scattered in the ground. On 

 the other hand, those inflammable gases which by their 

 frightful ravages carry desolation into mines, those pois- 

 ons vapours, those sjnritus lethales, as Pliny calls them, 

 which instantly destroy life and extinguish a torch, were 

 they not calculated to freeze with horror those who 

 should dare to penetrate into the abysses of the mountains? 



Superstitious alarms also long hindered men from gath- 

 ering the mineral riches which the bosom of the earth 

 incloses. As they are principally found in countries which 

 have been the theatre of the most violent convulsions, it 

 was with unmixed terror that men approached the Avild 

 and gloomy spots where they lay stored up ; and sometimes 

 gross credulity spread the belief that they were guarded by 

 dragons, jealous of the supremacy of their dark domains. 

 To these all the accidents which happened to miners were 

 attributed: at the moment when the fire-damp exploded, 

 it was said that they were seen in the shape of horses, 

 with fiery manes, passing through the ruins and the fire. 



Pacific spirits, however, everywhere efiaced the work of 

 these evil genii; this was a rooted belief in all the mining 

 districts, brutalized by isolation and the most degrading- 

 superstition. The venerable father of mineralogy, Agricola, 

 influenced himself by the legends of the workmen, in his 

 celebrated work describes these spirits as minutely as if 

 he had held them in his hand; not a detail of form or 

 dress is wanting. 



The belief was a last ray of the antic^ue philosophy 

 which held that every particle of created matter was ani- 

 mated by invisible intelligence, and possessed sensibility 

 and a spirit of harmony. 



According to the believers in the Cabala, there existed 



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