101< DR BOUE' ON THE GEOGNOSY OF GERMANY. 
appearances, which might be adduced in support of die 
Huttonian theory. Were I not apprehensive of being- 
considered ras]i, I would mention the appearance of por- 
phyry elevating itself, with various true igneous accidents^ 
from below, and out of the clayst(me and gneiss rocks. It 
is also ascertained, I can say, that the beds of porphyry 
described in the gneiss of that country, are true veins, be- 
longing, as would appear, nearly all to the beginning of 
the Floetz Period ; in which there yet appears, as in Zinn- 
wald, a granite, with ores of zinc, and other minerals, which 
have b9en erroneously named the very oldest ones. That 
the metalliferous veins are intimately united with the ap- 
pearances of these crystalline igneous rocks, I cannot doubt; 
but, as may naturally be supposed, some of the minerals 
contained in the veins have got there from above, or have 
been formed in the aqueous way. The great metalli- 
ferous deposits in veins appeared to me to form a kind of 
net-work. Certainly nearly all that Werner has said 
about them is true : but his explanation, by filling up en- 
tirely from above, is no longer admissible. When we con- 
sider such vast bodies of rock impregnated with ores, as 
the auriferous transition-porphyries of Kremnitz and of 
Transylvania ; and when we reflect that all the rich mines 
of Hungaria and Transylvania are in porphyry masses, ex- 
cepting a single one in greywacke (Verespatak) ; and when 
we entertain a strong suspicion that these are igneous pro- 
ducts, we will not long be puzzled to comprehend the phe- 
nomena. You will probably oppose to the igneous hypo- 
thesis the Mercury-mines in the coal-formation ; but these 
also seem to have been produced in the same way, as re- 
sults from observations I lately made in the Bavarian Rhine 
provinces. The ores are there contained in small veins in 
porphyry, or in rocks in contact with such products ; and 
