Now, with regard to the means of procuring
subterraneous fire, if the consolidating operation shall be thus decided
to have been that of fusion, as I think I have fully shown, and for
which I have as many witnesses, perhaps as there are mineral bodies,
then our author's question, (how I am to procure a fire) in the way that
he has put it, as an argument against the fusion, would be at least
useless; for, though I should here confess my ignorance with regard to
the means of procuring fire, the evidence of the melting operation, or
former fluidity of those mineral bodies, would not be thereby in the
least diminished. If again no such evidence for the fusion of those
bodies shall appear, and it be concluded that they had been consolidated
by the action of water alone, as our author seems inclined to maintain,
he would have no occasion to start difficulties about the procuring of
fire, in order to refute a theory which then would fall of itself as
having no foundation.
But in order to see this author's notion of the theory which he is here
examining, it may be proper to give a specimen of his reasoning upon
this subject of heat.
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