MINERALS. 
343 
different appearance in its native state from what it 
is afterwards taught to assume by human industry. 
The variety of substances indeed which compose 
the internal parts of our globe, is productive of 
equal varieties both above and below its surface. 
r l he combination of the different minerals with 
each other, the heats which arise from their mix- 
ture, the vapours they diffuse, the fires which they 
generate, or the colds which they sometimes pro- 
duce, are all either noxious or salutary to man. Of 
these it must be confessed, that the major part are 
pernicious, and many of them destructive, to the 
poor wretches who are employed in the mining 
business. It is only necessary to notice the com- 
plexion of most miners, to be satisfied of the un- 
wholesorneness of the place where they are confined. 
Their pale and sallow looks show how much they 
suffer from the closeness of their habitation and the 
many noxious vapours to which they are exposed. 
We are told that in the quicksilver mines near 
the tow n of Idria, in the province of Carniola, in 
Germany, nothing can exceed the deplorable ap- 
pearance of the miners. The hospital belonging 
to the place is said to be full of them, in an ema- 
ciated and crippled state, with contracted and pa- 
ralytic iimbs. Dr. Pope, who has given an ac- 
count of these mines in the second volume of the 
Abridgement of the Philosophical Transactions, 
mentions one man who was not in the mines above 
half a year, and yet whose body was so impreg- 
nated with quicksilver, that putting a piece of brass 
