which this conducting body had received from the water running successively over every part of it.  But among the infinite number of siliceous concretions and crystallizations, as well as those of an almost indefinite variety of other substances, all of which are attributed to solution, there is not the least vestige of any collateral operation, by which the nature of that concretion might be ascertained in the same manner.  In all those cases, we see nothing but the concreted substances or their crystallizations; but, no mark of any solvent or incrusting process is to be perceived.  On the contrary, almost all, or the greatest part of them, are so situated, and attended with such circumstances, as demonstrate the physical impossibility of that being the manner in which they had been concreted; for, they are situated within close cavities, through which nothing can pervade but heat, electricity, magnetism, etc.; and they fill those cavities more or less, from the thinnest incrustation of crystals to the full content of those cavities with various substances, all regularly concreted or crystallised according to an order which cannot apply to the concretion of any manner of solution.

That there is, in the mineral system, an operation of water which may with great propriety be termed infiltration, I make no doubt.  But this operation of water, that may be employed in consolidating the strata in the mineral regions, is essentially different from that which is inconsiderately employed or supposed by mineralists when they talk of infiltration; these two operations have nothing in common except employing the water of the surface of the earth to percolate a porous body.  Now, the percolation of water may increase the porousness of that body which it pervades, but never can thus change it from a porous to a perfect solid body.  But even the percolation of water through the strata deposited at the bottom of the sea, necessarily required, according to the supposition of naturalists, must be refused; for, the interstices of those strata are, from the supposition of the case, already filled with water; consequently, without first removing that stagnant water, it is in vain to propose the infiltration of any fluid from the surface.

This is a difficulty which does not occur in our theory, where the strata, deposited at the bottom of the sea, are to be afterwards heated by the internal fires of the earth.  The natural consequence of those heating operations may be considered as the converting of the water contained in the strata into steam, and the expulsion of steam or vapour, by raising it up against the power of gravity, to be delivered upon the surface of the earth and again condensed to the state of water.