e
calcareous concretion. Now, these principles are always to be perceived,
more or less, in all the bizarre or fantastical, as well as regular
shapes which are produced by stalactical concretions. At present, we
shall confine our views to one particular shape, which is simple,
regular, and perfectly understood wherever it is formed.

Drops of water falling from a roof, and forming stalactite, produce
first tubular bodies, and then gradually consolidate and increase those
pendulous bodies by incrustation. These appearances are thought to be
observed in the calcedony and ferruginous concretions, which has led
some mineralists to conclude, that those concretions had been formed
in the same manner, by means of water. We are now to show that these
mineral appearances are not analogous to stalactites in their formation,
and that they have evidently been formed in a different manner.

It must be evident, that, in the formation of those pendulous bodies,
each distinct stalactite must be formed by a separate drop of water;
consequently, that no more stalactites can be formed in a given space,
than there could have subsisted separate drops of water. Now, a drop of
water is a very determined thing; and thus we have a principle by which
to judge of those mistaken appearances.

Let us suppose the gut of water to be but one eighth of an inch,
although it is a great deal more, we should have no stalactites formed
nearer to each other than that measure of space. But those mineral
concretions, which are supposed to be stalactical, are contained in half
that space, or are nearer to each other than the tenth or twentieth of
an inch. I have them like needles, and in every degree of proximity or
contiguity, at the same time that they are perfectly solid. Therefore,
it is plainly impossible that they could have been formed upon this
principle of calcareous stalactite. But, it is only by this false
resemblance, that any argument can be formed for the concretion of those
bodies from an aqueous solution; in every other respect they are true
mineral concretions; and, that these have had a very different origin,
has been already the subject of investigation, and will be more
particularly examined in the course of this work.

The term _infiltration_, which has been much employed for explaining
mineral appearances, is too vague, imperfect, or unexplicit, for
science, whether as the means of knowing nature, or the subject of
confutation. This is