This is not the light in which I view the subject. I give
those gentlemen credit for diligently observing nature; and I applaud
them for having the merit to reason for themselves, which would seem to
be the case with few of the many naturalists who now speak and write
upon the subject.
Let us now draw an inference, with regard to this, in judging of the
different theories. Either the received system concerning mineral
operations is just, in which case those gentlemen, who employ a secret
metamorphosis, may be to blame in laying it aside; or it is erroneous
and deficient; and, in that case, they have the merit of distinguishing
the error or deficiency of the prevailing system. How far they have seen
the system of nature, in those examples which they have described,
is another question. In the mean time, I am to avail myself of the
testimony of those gentlemen of observation, by which the insufficiency
at least of the received mineral system is acknowledged.]
After speculating upon the effect of the ancient ocean upon the
mountains of that country, he proceeds as follows:
"Je laisse ces conjectures pour remarquer un fait singulier: la colline,
qui est au nord de l'eglise de la fonderie, a son arrete composee de ce
hornstein qui se decompose en pierre calcaire; mais ici, les parties,
qui sont ainsi decomposees, offrent une substance calcedonieuse
disposees par zones concentriques, comme on l'observe dans les agates
d'oberstein; mais ce ne sont point ici des corps parasites formes par
infiltration dans des cavites pre-existantes comme les agates; on voit
que ce sont les parties constituantes de la roche qui, _par un
travail interne_, et par une sorte de crystallisation, out pris cette
disposition reguliere (que ce mot de _crystallisation_ ne revolte point,
j'appelle ainsi toute tendance a prendre une forme constante, polyedre
ou non polyedre.
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