This is not the place where that subject of these particular rocks,
which is extremely interesting, is to be examined. We shall afterwards
have occasion to treat of that matter at large. It is sufficient here to
observe, that our author finds occasion to generalise the formation of
those petrifactions with the flintifications in calcareous and gypseous
bodies. When, therefore, the formation of any of them shall be
demonstrated, as having taken its origin in the fusion of those
substances, this mode of operation, which is generalised in the
consolidation of strata, will be properly inferred in all the rest.
Petrifaction is a subject in which mineralogists have perhaps wandered
more widely from the truth than in any other part of natural history;
and the reason is plain. The mineral operations of nature lie in a part
of the globe which is necessarily inaccessible to man, and where the
powers of nature act under very different conditions from those which we
find take place in the only situation where we can live. Naturalists,
therefore, finding in stalactical incrustation a cause for the formation
of stone, in many respects analogous to what is found in the strata of
the earth, and which had come from the mineral region in a consolidated
state, have, without due consideration, attributed to this cause all the
appearances of petrifaction or mineral concretion.
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