In that case, those stratified
bodies, contracting in cooling, form veins and fissures traversing
perpendicularly their planes; and these veins are afterwards filled with
mineral substances. These are what I have here distinguished as the
_particular_ veins of mineral masses; things perfectly different from
proper mineral or metallic veins, which are more general, as belonging
to immense masses of those strata; and which had been formed, not from
the contraction, but from the disrupture of those masses, and by the
forcible injection of fluid mineral substances from below. Now these two
species of veins, the particular and the general, although occasionally
connected, must be in science carefully distinguished; in the one, we
see the means which had been employed for the consolidation of the
strata; in the other, we see that power by which the strata have been
raised from the bottom of the sea and placed in the atmosphere.]
Error never can be consistent, nor can truth fail of having support from
the accurate examination of every circumstance. It is not enough to
have found appearances decisive of the question, with regard to the
two suppositions which have been now considered, we may farther seek
confirmation of that supposition which has been found alone consistent
with appearances.
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