Now, these principles are always to be perceived,
more or less, in all the bizarre or fantastical, as well as regular
shapes which are produced by stalactical concretions. At present, we
shall confine our views to one particular shape, which is simple,
regular, and perfectly understood wherever it is formed.
Drops of water falling from a roof, and forming stalactite, produce
first tubular bodies, and then gradually consolidate and increase those
pendulous bodies by incrustation. These appearances are thought to be
observed in the calcedony and ferruginous concretions, which has led
some mineralists to conclude, that those concretions had been formed
in the same manner, by means of water. We are now to show that these
mineral appearances are not analogous to stalactites in their formation,
and that they have evidently been formed in a different manner.
It must be evident, that, in the formation of those pendulous bodies,
each distinct stalactite must be formed by a separate drop of water;
consequently, that no more stalactites can be formed in a given space,
than there could have subsisted separate drops of water.
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