It is not every one who is fit to reason with regard to abstract general
propositions; I will now, therefore, state a particular case, in
illustration of that proposition which has been here so improperly
answered. The strata of Derbyshire marbles were originally immense
collections at the bottom of the sea, of calcareous bodies consisting
almost wholly of various fragments of the _entrochi_; and they were then
covered with an indefinite number of other strata under which these
_entrochi_ must have been buried. In this original state of those
strata, I suppose the interstices between the fragments of the coralline
bodies to have been left full of sea-water; at present we find those
interstices completely filled with a most perfectly solid body of
marble; and the question is, whether that consolidating operation
has been the work of water and solution, by our naturalist's termed
infiltration; or if it has been performed, as I have maintained, by the
softening power or heat, or introduction of matter in the fluid state
of fusion. Our author does not propose any other method for the
consolidation of those loose and incoherent bodies, but he speaks of the
_mutual attraction of the component particles of stone to each other_;
Will that fill the interstices between the coralline bodies with solid
marble, as well as consolidate the coralline bodies themselves? or, if
it should, How are those interstices to be thus filled with a substance
perfectly different from the deposited bodies, which is also frequently
the case? But, how reason with a person who, with this consolidation of
strata, confounds the well known operation by which the mortar, made
with caustic lime and sand, becomes a hard body! One would imagine
that he were writing to people of the last age, and not to chemical
philosophers who know so well how that mortar is concreted.
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