UNORGANIZED MINERAL BODIES. 571 
sea, renders them unfit for the support of terres- 
trial animals or vegetables), and transmitting 
them in genial showers to scatter fertility over 
the earth, and maintain the never-failing reser- 
voirs of those springs and rivers by which they 
are again returned to mix with their parent 
ocean ; in all these circumstances we find such 
evidence of nicely balanced adaptation of means 
to ends, of wise foresight, and benevolent inten- 
tion, and infinite power, that he must be blind 
indeed, who refuses to recognize in them proofs 
of the most exalted attributes of the Creator."* 
Chapter XXIII. 
Proofs of Design in the Stnictiue and Composition 
of nnorganized Minei'al Sodies. 
Much of the physical history of the compound 
forms of unorganized mineral bodies, has been 
anticipated in the considerations given in our 
early chapters to the unstratified and crystal- 
line rocks. It remains only to say a few words 
respecting the simple minerals that form the 
ingredients of these rocks, and the elementary 
bodies of which they are composed. t 
* Buckland, Inaug. Lecture, p. 13. 
t The term simple mineral is applied not only to uncombined 
mineral substances, which are rare in Nature, such as pure native 
