istake with
regard to the case, and that all the circumstances may not have been
considered. This caution with regard to the inaccurate representation of
facts, in natural history, is certainly extremely necessary; the relicts
of an elephant found in a mineral vein, is certainly a fact of that
kind, which should not be given as an example in geology without the
most accurate scientifical examination of the subject.]

Here M. Pallas gives his reason for supposing those mountains primitive
or anterior to the operations of this globe as a living world; _first_,
because they have not, in general, marks of animals or plants; and that
it is doubtful if they ever properly contain those marks of organised
bodies; _secondly_, because many of those rocks have the appearance of
having suffered the effects of the most violent fire. Now, What are
those effects? Is it in their having been brought into a fluid state of
fusion. In that case, no doubt, they may have been much changed from the
original state of their formation; but this is a very good reason why,
in this changed state, the marks of organised bodies, which may have
been in their original constitution, should be now effaced.

The _third_ reason for supposing those mountains primitive, is taken
from the metallic veins, which are found so plentifully in these masses.
Now, had these masses been the only bodies in this earth in which those
mineral veins were found, there might be some species of reason for
drawing the conclusion, which is here formed by our philosopher. But
nothing is so common (at least in England) as mineral veins in the
strata of the latest formation, and in those which are principally
formed of marine productions; consequently so far from serving the
purpose for which this argument was employed, the mineral veins in the
primitive mountains tend to destroy their originality, by assimilating
them in some respect with every other mass of strata or mountain upon
the globe.

_Lastly_, M. Pallas here employs an argument taken from an appearance
for which we are particularly indebted to him, and by which the
arguments which have been already employed in denying the originality
of granite is abundantly confirmed. It has been already alleged, that
granite, porphyry, and whinstone, or trap, graduate into each other; but
here M. Pallas informs us that he has found the granite not only changed
into porphyry, but also into the other alpine compositions. How an
argum