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prove, that the actual Jlate and appearance ofminerals are not due to previous fusion.

The Doctor indeed, seems to rest: thenecessity of admitting his theory chiefly onthe impossibility of ascribing the acknow-ledged original fluidity or softness of mine-rals to any other cause but igneous fusion.There are just: two ways, he fays, by whichporous bodies may be consolidated, andformed into masses of a regular structure,namely, congelation from a fluid state bycold, and accretion by crystallization fromwater. His arguments against this lastwidely dispersed through his whole work,or at least, the principal among them, Ishall now consider, but expressed in myown words, as the author’s statements areintolerably perplexed and diffuse, and more-over frequently refer to that part of histheory which I have already refuted, name-ly, that all minerals were originally collect-ed at the bottom of the sea from the mate-rials of an anterior continent, and conse-quently in a spungy porous state, as he callsit.

i°. If it was from a solution in waterthat minerals were formed, it is impossible

to