e circumstances of condensation or
refrigeration. In respect of these, the mineral veins now to be examined
are anomalous. They are; but we know not why or how. We see the effect;
but, in that effect, we do not see the cause. We can say, negatively,
that the cause of mineral veins is not that by which the veins and
fissures of consolidated strata have been formed; consequently, that
it is not the measured contraction and regulated condensation of the
consolidated land which has formed those general mineral veins; however,
veins, similar in many respects, have been formed by the cooperation of
this cause.

Having thus taken a view of the evident distinction between the veins or
contractions that are particular to the consolidated body in which they
are found, and those more general veins which are not limited to that
cause, we may now consider what is general in the subject, or what is
universal in these effects of which we wish to investigate the cause.

The event of highest generalization or universality, in the form of
those mineral veins, is fracture and dislocation. It is not, like that
of the veins of strata, simple separation and measured contraction; it
is violent fracture and unlimited dislocation. In the one case, the
forming cause is in the body which is separated; for, after the body had
been actuated by heat, it is by the reaction of the proper matter of the
body, that the chasm which constitutes the vein is formed. In the other
case, again, the cause is extrinsic in relation to the body in which the
chasm is formed. There has been the most violent fracture and divulsion;
but the cause is still to seek; and it appears not in the vein; for it
is not every fracture and dislocation of the solid body of our earth, in
which minerals, or the proper substances of mineral veins, are found.

We are now examining matter of fact, real effects, from whence we would
investigate the nature of certain events which do not now appear. Of
these, two kinds occur; one which has relation to the hardness and
solidity, or the natural constitution of the body; the other, to its
shape or local situation. The first has been already considered; the
last is now the subject of inquiry.

But, in examining those natural appearances, we find two different kinds
of veins; the one necessarily connected with the consolidating cause;
the other with that cause of which we now particularly inquire. For,
in those great mineral veins, violent f