and I shall now mention
it, that so the reader may keep it in his view: Pyrites is a
sulphureo-metallic substance, which cannot be produced by means of
water, a substance which the influences of the atmosphere decomposes or
separates into its elements, and which even our imperfect art may
be considered as able to produce, by means of fusion in our fires.
Therefore, the finding of this creature of fire intimately connected
with those consolidated strata of mineral coal, adds the greatest
confirmation, were it necessary, to the doctrine of those mineral bodies
having been consolidated by fusion. This confirmation, however, is
not necessary, and it is not the only thing which I am at present to
illustrate in that doctrine. What I have now in view is, to homologate
the origin of those coal strata, with the production of every other
mineral substance, by heat or fusion; and this is what the intimate
connection of pyrites with those strata will certainly accomplish. This
will be done in the following manner:

Pyrites is not only found in great masses along with the coal strata; it
is contained in the veins which traverse those strata, and in the minute
ramifications of those veins, which are occasioned by the contraction of
the mass, and generally divide it into small cubical pieces; but besides
that extrinsic connection, (as it may be called,) with the stratum of
coal, pyrites is found intimately connected with that solid body, in
being mixed with its substance. If, therefore, it were proved, that
either the one or other of those two substances had been consolidated by
fusion, the other must be acknowledged as having had the same origin;
but now I am to prove, from the natural history of mineral coal, that
pyrites had been there formed by fusion; and then, by means of the
known origin of that sulphureo-metallic substance, we shall extend our
knowledge to the origin of every other mineral body.

The process of this argument is as follows: Every mineral body, I
believe, without exception, will be found so intimately connected with
pyrites, that these two things must be concluded as having been together
in a fluid state, and that, whatever may have been the cause of fluidity
in the one, this must have also caused the fluidity in the other;
consequently, whatever shall be proved with regard to the mineral
operations of pyrites, must be considered as proved of every other
mineral substance. But, from the connection of pyrites w