and divulsion.

This appears from the order of the contents, or filling of these veins,
which is a thing often observed to be various and successive. But what
it is chiefly now in view to illustrate, is that immense force which is
manifested in the fracture and dispersion of the solid contents which
had formerly filled those veins. Here we find fragments of rock and spar
floating in the body of a vein filled with metallic substances; there,
again, we see the various fragments of metallic masses floating in the
sparry and siliceous contents.

One thing is demonstrable from the inspection of the veins and their
contents; this is, the successive irruptions of those fluid substances
breaking the solid bodies which they meet, and floating those fragments
of the broken bodies in the vein. It is very common to see three
successive series of those operations; and all this may be perceived in
a small fragment of stone, which a man of science may examine in his
closet, often better than descending to the mine, where all the examples
are found on an enlarged scale.

Let us now consider what power would be required to force up, from the
most unfathomable depth of the ocean, to the Andes or the Alps, a column
of fluid metal and of stone. This power cannot be much less than that
required to elevate the highest land upon the globe. Whether, therefore,
we shall consider the general veins as having been filled by mineral
steams, or by fluid minerals, an elevating power of immense force is
still required, in order to form as well as fill those veins. But such a
power acting under the consolidated masses at the bottom of the sea, is
the only natural means for making those masses land.

If such have been the operations that are necessary for the production
of this land; and if these operations are natural to the globe of this
earth, as being the effect of wisdom in its contrivance, we shall
have reason to look for the actual manifestation of this truth in the
phaenomena of nature, or those appearances which more immediately
discover the actual cause in the perceived effect.

To see the evidence of marble, a body that is solid, having been formed
of loose materials collected at the bottom of the sea, is not always
easy, although it may be made abundantly plain; and to be convinced that
this calcareous stone, which calcines so easily in our fires, should
have been brought into fusion by subterraneous heat, without suffering
calcination