es, which he supposes is by mean of
infiltration; and he has endeavoured to conceive another manner of
operating, still however by means of water, which I suppose, according
to this hypothesis, is to dissolve substances in one part, and deposits
them in another, There must certainly be some great _desideratum_ in
that mineral philosophy which is obliged to have recourse to such
violent suppositions. First, water is not an universal solvent, as it
would require to be, upon this supposition; secondly, were water allowed
to be an universal menstruum, here is to be established a circulation
that does not naturally arise from the mixture of water and earth; and,
lastly, were this circulation to be allowed, it would not explain the
variety which is found in the consolidation and concretion of mineral
bodies.

So long, therefore, as we are to explain natural appearances by
reasoning from known principles, and not by ascribing those effects to
preternatural causes, we cannot allow of this regular operation which
M. Patrin alleges to be acting in the interior parts of the most solid
bodies. This is indeed evident, that there has been a cause operating
in the internal parts of the most solid bodies, a cause by which the
elements, or constituent parts of those solid bodies, have been moved
and regularly disposed, as this author very well observes must have been
the case in our agates or eyed stones; but to ascribe to water this
effect, or to employ either an ineffectual or an unknown cause, is not
to reason philosophically with regard to the history of nature; it is to
reason phantastically, and to imagine fable.

M. Monnet has imagined a petrifying power in water very different
from any that has hitherto been conceived, I believe, by natural
philosophers, and I also believe, altogether inconsistent with
experience or matter of fact; but as it is not without good reason that
this naturalist has been induced to look out for a petrifying cause
different from any hitherto supposed, and as he has endeavoured very
properly to refute the systems of petrification hitherto received,
I would beg leave to transcribe his reasoning upon the subject in
corroboration of the present theory of consolidation by the means of
fusion.

It is upon occasion of describing one of the species of alpine stone
or schistus which contains quartzy particles. _Nouveau voyage
mineralogique, etc._ Journal de Physique Aoust 1784.

"Il y a loin de cette pierre