In examining consolidated strata, we remarked veins and cutters as a proof of the means by which those bodies had been consolidated.  In that case, the formation of these veins is a regulated process, determined by the degree of fusion, and the 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 fracture and dislocation is the principle; but there is no other principle upon which strata, or masses formed at the bottom of the sea, can be placed at a height above its surface.  Hence, in those two different operations, of forming mineral veins, and erecting strata from a lower to a higher place, the principle is the same; for, neither can be done without violent fracture and dislocation.