In all
those cases, we see nothing but the concreted substances or their
crystallizations; but, no mark of any solvent or incrusting process is
to be perceived. On the contrary, almost all, or the greatest part
of them, are so situated, and attended with such circumstances, as
demonstrate the physical impossibility of that being the manner in which
they had been concreted; for, they are situated within close cavities,
through which nothing can pervade but heat, electricity, magnetism,
etc.; and they fill those cavities more or less, from the thinnest
incrustation of crystals to the full content of those cavities with
various substances, all regularly concreted or crystallised according to
an order which cannot apply to the concretion of any manner of solution.
That there is, in the mineral system, an operation of water which may
with great propriety be termed _infiltration_, I make no doubt. But this
operation of water, that may be employed in consolidating the strata
in the mineral regions, is essentially different from that which is
inconsiderately employed or supposed by mineralists when they talk
of infiltration; these two operations have nothing in common except
employing the water of the surface of the earth to percolate a porous
body.
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