SALMON — ON THE FORMATION OF OllE-VEINS. 
359 
not identical. The latter is applied to all ore-containing deposits, 
whether the ore be in rock-veins, mineral-veins, beds, stocks, or 
irregular and undefinable masses ; while the tei'm miaieral-vein is 
always used within the strict limits of the definition. 
V. The study of mineral- veins has a geological interest in no wise 
depending on those veins containing ores ; and the study of the dis- 
tribution of the ores of the useful metals, in whatever form they may 
occur, has a scientific interest quite distinct, and of a different class, 
from that of mineral- veins. The study of mineral- veins, and the 
study of metalUferous deposits, are consequently not identical pur- 
suits ; yet they are very nearly allied, inasmuch as by far the greater 
mass of metalliferous or ore deposits do occur in mineral- veins. 
General Considerations on the Formation op Ore-Veins. From 
the German of Bernhakd Cotta, Professor of Geognosy at the 
Mining Academy of Freiberg.* 
The formation of ore-veins should not, in aiay case, be regarded as 
an isolated phenomenon ; it is intimately connected with the forma- 
tion or metamorphism of certain rocks, and is only a particular, or 
special, effect of certain geological causes. 
It was a very general and not unnatural mistake of the early in- 
vestigators in the modern school of special geology that, freed from 
the general and vague hypotheses on the formation of the earth pre- 
valent in the past century, and having their attention concentrated 
on the observation of isolated geological phenomena, they should 
consider and endeavour to accoimt for them as being independent 
of each other and without any necessary connection. The explana- 
tion discovered or devised to account for one particular case was be- 
lieved to be applicable to all others in any measure analogous to it. 
The consequences were, on the one side, too sharp a separation of 
special branches, and on the other, too great a striving after large 
generalizations. As they endeavoured to explain the origin of one 
ore-vein without reference to the incidents of its particular locality, 
so they would have it that all ore-veins, without distinction, 
originated in a similar manner. Indeed, some of the latest and 
* Gangstudicn, Vol. I., p. 85. 
