The reader will see, in
the place quoted, or in the _avant-propos_ to his _Memoire sur les Iles
Ponces_, the fact to be this; That the Chevalier Dolomieu finds those
bodies which we either cannot melt in our fires, or which we cannot melt
without changing them by calcination and vitrification, he finds, I say,
these substances had actually been melted with his lavas; he also finds
those substances, which are necessarily dissipated in our fires, to have
been retained in those melted mineral substances. Had our author quoted
the text, instead of giving us his own interpretation, he could not have
offered a stronger confirmation of my theory; which certainly is not
concerned with the particular intensity of volcanic fire, and far less
with what may be the opinion of any naturalist with regard to that
intensity, but only with the efficacy of that volcanic heat for the
melting of mineral substances. Now this efficacy of volcanic fire, so
far as we are to found upon the authority given on this occasion, is
clearly confirmed by the observations of a most intelligent mineralist,
and one who is actually a patron of the opposite theory to that which I
have given.
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