owels of the earth, from that solution. It may now be proper to
examine this subject, not with a view to explain all those petrifactions
of bodies which is performed in the mineral regions of the earth, those
regions that are inaccessible to man, but to show that what has been
wrote by naturalists, upon this subject, has only a tendency to corrupt
science, by admitting the grossest supposition in place of just
principle or truth, and to darken natural history by introducing an ill
conceived theory in place of matter of fact.

M. le Comte de Buffon has attempted to explain the crystallization
of bodies, or production of mineral forms, by the accretion or
juxtaposition of elementary bodies, which have only form in two
dimensions, length and breadth; that is to say, that mineral concretions
are composed of surfaces alone, and not of bodies. This however is only
an attempt to explain, what we do not understand, by a proposition which
is either evidently contradictory, or plainly inconceivable. It is
true that this eloquent and ingenious author endeavours to correct the
palpable absurdity of the proposition, by representing the constituent
parts of the mineral bodies as "_de lames infiniment minces_;" but who
is it does not see, that these infinitely thin plates are no other than
bodies of three dimensions, contrary to the supposition; for, infinitely
thin, means a certain thickness; but the smallest possible or assignable
thickness differs as much from a perfect superficies as the greatest.

M. de Luc has given us his ideas of petrifaction with sufficient
precision of term and clearness of expression; his opinion, therefore,
deserves to be examined; and, as his theory of petrifaction is equally
applicable to every species of substance, it is necessary again to
examine this subject, notwithstanding of what has been already said,
in the first part of this work, concerning consolidation and mineral
concretion from the fluid state of fusion.

This author has perhaps properly exposed Woodward's Theory of
Petrification in saying[33], "Son erreur a cet egard vient de ce qu'il
n'a point reflechi sur la maniere dont se fait la _petrifaction_. Il
ramollit d'abord les _pierres_ pour y faire entrer les coquilles, sans
bien connoitre l'agent qu'il y employe; et il les duroit ensuite, sans
reflechir au comment." To avoid this error or defect, M. de Luc, in his
Theory of Petrifaction, sets out with the acknowledged principle of
cohesion