This no doubt
must be a stumbling block to those who maintain that granite mountains
are the primitive parts of our earth; and who, like our author, suppose
that "things may have been originally, as at present, in a solid state."
It must also be a great, if not an invincible obstacle in the way of the
aqueous theory, which thus endeavours to explain those granite veins
that are found traversing strata, and therefore necessarily of a
posterior formation.
To remove that obstacle in the way of the aqueous theory, or to carry
that theory over the obstacle which he cannot remove, our author
undertakes to refute my theory with regard to the igneous origin of
stony substances, by giving an example of granite formed upon the
surface of the earth by means of water, or in what is called the
moist way; and he closes his Dissertation with this example as an
_experimentum crucis_. It is therefore necessary that I take this
demonstration of our author into particular consideration; for, surely,
independent of our controversy, which is perhaps of little moment, here
is the most interesting experiment, as it is announced, that mineralogy
could be enriched with.
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