There cannot be a more fair exposition of facts; and it is only our author’s opinion of this mineral transmutation that I would controvert.  I do not pretend to understand the manner of operating that our author here supposes nature to take.  I only maintain, that here, as every where in general, the loose and incoherent strata of the globe have been petrified, that is, consolidated, by means of the fusion of their substances; and this I think is confirmed from the accurate description here given of the flintification of sand-stone.  Here is described very distinctly an appearance which is very common or general on those occasions; this is the parts or particles of stone floating in the fluid siliceous substance, and there dissolving more or less.

M. de Carosi describes very systematically the generation of silex, calcedony, onyx, and quartz, in calcareous earth, marl, gypsum, sand-stone, and also what he terms terre glaise, ou de l’Argile.  It is in this last that we find a perfect analogy with what is so frequent in this country of Scotland.  These are the agates, calcedonies, calcareous and zeolite nodules, which are found produced in our whin-stone or subterraneous lavas, that is, the amygdaloides of Crondstedt.  Naturalists explain the formation of those nodular bodies differently.  The Chevalier de Dolomieu supposes these rocks to have been erupted lavas, originally containing cavities; and that these cavities in the solid rock had been afterwards filled and crystallised, by means of infiltration, with the different substances which are found variously concreted and crystallised within the solid rocks.  Our author, on the contrary, supposes these formed by a species of chemical transmutation of calcareous and argillaceous earths, which, if not altogether incomprehensible, is at least not in any degree, so far as I know, a thing to be understood.

This is not the place where that subject of these particular rocks, which is extremely interesting, is to be examined.  We shall afterwards have occasion to treat of that matter at large.  It is sufficient here to observe, that our author finds occasion to generalise the formation of those petrifactions with the flintifications in calcareous and gypseous bodies.  When, therefore, the formation of any of them shall be demonstrated, as having taken its origin in the fusion of those substances, this mode of operation, which is generalised in the consolidation of strata, will be properly inferred in all the rest.

Petrifaction is a subject in which mineralogists have perhaps wandered more widely from the truth than in any other part of natural history; and the reason is plain.  The mineral operations of nature lie in a part of the globe which is necessarily inaccessible to man, and where the powers of nature act under very different conditions from those which we find take place in the only situation where we can live.  Naturalists, therefore, finding in stalactical incrustation