117 
from Guadaloupe. 
other. It may therefore be safely concluded, that the sur- 
rounding mass must have been in a soft or semi-fluid state, 
which, whilst it opposed no effectual resistance to a shock 
from witlioiit, readily filled up the chasms produced by it. 
From the composition of the stone, a late period may, per- 
haps, be assigned to its formation; yet there is nothing in the 
above description that necessarily implies a very recent origin. 
For although there are many instances of gravel and sand 
being quickly formed into hard masses ; and even art has 
availed itself of this circumstance to produce from the granitic 
detritus a complete regenerated granite (in which cementa- 
tion of loose siliceous grains oxyd of iron is well known to be 
a powerful agent), yet we know of no limestone being formed 
as it were under the eyes of men ; for stalactically concreted 
limestone, as I have already observed, should not be con- 
founded with this. 
Saussure (as you had the goodness to point out to me) 
mentions, indeed, sands on the shore near Messina, which, by 
means of a calcareous juice from the sea, as that writer ex- 
presses himself, acquire a degree of hardness, which renders 
them fit to serve for mill-stones; but it would appear, from 
the context, that the sand thus agglutinated is siliceous. 
The circumstance of these bones not being actually petrified, 
and even retaining part of their gluten, though considered by 
some as a proof of their recent deposition, is by no means 
conclusive ; for there does not seem to be any reason why 
lapidification of organic bodies should ever take place, under 
circumstances unfavourable to that remarkable process : ac- 
cordingly, the bones in the Fletz limestone caverns, and in the- 
breccia of Gibraltar, Dalmatia, Cette, &c. appear not to have 
