430 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY, 



lines and other crystallized minerals which sparkle in the bosom of 

 the primitive rocks declare a common birth.* 



True it is, that creative power would call the rocks into being, 

 without any arranging process in their parts, but no analogy counte- 

 nances the truth of such a supposition, and neither moral nor physi- 

 cal reasons oblige us to admit so improbable a supposition. 



Who has contemplated the stupendous garnets of Fahlun — the 

 equally gigantic quartz and felspar crystals of the Alps — the more 

 delicate emeralds of Brazil and Ethiopia — the variously colored tour- 

 malines of Chesterfield, and Goshen, Mass., and of Paris in Maine 

 — the fluor and calcareous spars of Derbyshire and Cumberland — the 

 idocrases of Vesuvius, and the rubies and sapphires of Ceylon and 

 other regions of India, the bubbles of air included with water and 

 other fluids in quartz — the fibres of amianthus — the crystals of titani- 

 um — the filaments of native copper and silver shut up in the same 

 mineral — the successive crystallizations of galena — sulphate of bary- 

 tes — calcareous spar — quartz and fluor spar, often included in the 

 same group — the splendid amethystine and other geodes — little grot- 

 toes lined with polished and beautiful geometrical figures — who has 

 seen all these things — the ornaments of our cabinets, and has doubted 

 that they were as truly the results of crystallization, as any of the 

 products of art, which are formed in our laboratories? 



Crystallization is indeed not exclusively the attribute of primitive 

 regions ; but in such regions it is eminently conspicuons, and if we 

 find crystals in the productions of every geological age, we are thus 

 furnished with proof, that these agencies continued to operate, al- 

 though with less frequency and energy, through all succeeding peri- 

 ods, and that they have not ceased even in our own times,t for mine- 

 ral crystals are, every moment forming around us. 



* Prof. Hitchcock, in his geology of Massachusetts, considers the simultaneous 

 and mixed crystallization of the different minerals in granite, as affording decisive 

 proof of its igneous origin, since, as he avers, aqueous solutions of different sub- 

 stances crystallize, always successively, and never in promiscuous confusion. 



t I have obtained crystals of calcareous spar — of sulphate of barytes and of 

 sulphate of lime and some of them repeatedly as accidental results in chemical 

 processes : I have seen even quartz crystals form rapidly under my eye, and others 

 have cited them as slowly produced with regularity and beauty, from the fluoric 

 solution of silex. Crystals of pyroxene — specular iron, titanium and other mine- 

 rals have been produced by volcanic and furnace heat ; more than forty species of 

 minerals have been observed in the slags of furnaces, and white pyroxene has been 

 produced by the action of fire upon the constituents of this mineral, and after fu- 

 sion, it has re-crystallized, in the same form. — Am. Jour. Vol. 10. p. 190. 



