of the sea, where there might
be a circulation of air and percolation of water, How could the strata
of the earth below the level of the sea be petrified? This is a question
that does not seem to have entered into the heads of our naturalists
who attempt to explain petrifaction or mineral concretion from aqueous
solutions. But the consolidation of loose and incoherent things,
gathered together at the bottom of the sea, and afterwards raised
into rocks of various sorts, forms by far the greatest example of
petrification or mineral operation of this globe. It is this that must
be explained in a mineral theory; and it is this great process of
petrifaction to which the doctrine of infiltration, whether for the
mechanical purpose of applying cohesive surfaces, or the chemical one of
forming crystallizations and concretions, will not by any means apply.

Nothing shows more how little true science has been employed for the
explanation of phenomena, than the language of modern naturalists, who
attribute, to stalactical and stalagmical operations, every superficial
or distant resemblance to those calcareous bodies, the origin of which
we know so well. It is not a mere resemblance that should homologate
different things; there should be a specific character in every thing
that is to be generalised. It will be our business to show that, in the
false stalactites, there is not the distinctive character of those water
formed bodies to be found.

In the formation of stalactical concretions, besides the incrustation as
well as crystallization of the stony substance from the aqueous vehicle
by which it had been carried in the dissolved state, we have the other
necessary accompanyments of the operation, or collateral circumstances
of the case. Such, for example, is that tubular construction of the
stalactite, first formed by the concretion of the calcareous substance
upon the outside of the pendant gut of water exposed to the evaporation
of the atmosphere; we then see the gradual filling up of that pervious
tube through which the petrifying water had passed for a certain time;
and, lastly, we see the continual accretion which this conducting body
had received from the water running successively over every part of
it. But among the infinite number of siliceous concretions and
crystallizations, as well as those of an almost indefinite variety of
other substances, all of which are attributed to solution, there is not
the least vestige of a