bodies through which water percolates.  But how is the general petrifaction or consolidation of strata, below the surface of the sea, to be explained by the general dissolution of that consolidating substance in the earth above that level?  Instead of finding a general petrifying or consolidating operation in the part of the earth which we are able to examine, we find the contrary operation, so far at least as relates to calcareous spar, and many other mineral bodies which are decomposed and dissolved upon the surface of the earth.

Thus in the surface of the earth, above the level of the sea, no petrifying operation of a durable nature is found; and, were such an operation there found, it could not be general, as affecting every kind of substance.  But, even suppose that such a general operation were found to take place in the earth above the level of the sea, where there might be a circulation of air and percolation of water, How could the strata of the earth below the level of the sea be petrified?  This is a question that does not seem to have entered into the heads of our naturalists who attempt to explain petrifaction or mineral concretion from aqueous solutions.  But the consolidation of loose and incoherent things, gathered together at the bottom of the sea, and afterwards raised into rocks of various sorts, forms by far the greatest example of petrification or mineral operation of this globe.  It is this that must be explained in a mineral theory; and it is this great process of petrifaction to which the doctrine of infiltration, whether for the mechanical purpose of applying cohesive surfaces, or the chemical one of forming crystallizations and concretions, will not by any means apply.

Nothing shows more how little true science has been employed for the explanation of phenomena, than the language of modern naturalists, who attribute, to stalactical and stalagmical operations, every superficial or distant resemblance to those calcareous bodies, the origin of which we know so well.  It is not a mere resemblance that should homologate different things; there should be a specific character in every thing that is to be generalised.  It will be our business to show that, in the false stalactites, there is not the distinctive character of those water formed bodies to be found.

In the formation of stalactical concretions, besides the incrustation as well as crystallization of the stony substance from the aqueous vehicle by which it had been carried in the dissolved state, we have the other necessary accompanyments of the operation, or collateral circumstances of the case.  Such, for example, is that tubular construction of the stalactite, first formed by the concretion of the calcareous substance upon the outside of the pendant gut of water exposed to the evaporation of the atmosphere; we then see the gradual filling up of that pervious tube through which the petrifying water had passed for a certain time; and, lastly, we see the continual accretion