We can say, negatively,
that the cause of mineral veins is not that by which the veins and
fissures of consolidated strata have been formed; consequently, that
it is not the measured contraction and regulated condensation of the
consolidated land which has formed those general mineral veins; however,
veins, similar in many respects, have been formed by the cooperation of
this cause.
Having thus taken a view of the evident distinction between the veins or
contractions that are particular to the consolidated body in which they
are found, and those more general veins which are not limited to that
cause, we may now consider what is general in the subject, or what is
universal in these effects of which we wish to investigate the cause.
The event of highest generalization or universality, in the form of
those mineral veins, is fracture and dislocation. It is not, like that
of the veins of strata, simple separation and measured contraction; it
is violent fracture and unlimited dislocation. In the one case, the
forming cause is in the body which is separated; for, after the body had
been actuated by heat, it is by the reaction of the proper matter of the
body, that the chasm which constitutes the vein is formed.
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