We now only want to know, how far it is by the same power, as well as upon the same principle, that these two operations have been made.  An expansive force, acting from below, is the power most proper for erecting masses; but whether it is a power of the same nature with that which has been employed in forming mineral veins, will best appear in knowing the nature of their contents.  These, therefore, may be now considered.

Every species of fracture, and every degree of dislocation and contortion, may be perceived in the form of mineral veins; and there is no other general principle to be observed in examining their form.  But, in examining their contents, some other principle may appear, so far as, to the dislocating power or force, there may be superadded matter, by which something in relation to the nature of the power may be known.  If, for example, a tree or a rock shall be found simply split asunder, although there be no doubt with regard to some power having been applied in order to produce the effect, yet we are left merely to conjecture at the power.  But when wedges of wood or iron, or frozen water, should be found lodged in the cleft, we might be enabled, from this appearance, to form a certain judgment with regard to the nature of the power which had been applied.  This is the case with mineral veins.  We find them containing matter, which indicates a cause; and every information in this case is interesting to the theory.

The substances contained in mineral veins are precisely the same with those which, in the former section, we have considered as being made instrumental in the consolidation of strata; and they are found mixed and concreted in every manner possible.

But, besides this evidence for the exertion of extreme heat, in that process by which those veins were filled, there is another important observation to be gathered from the inspection of this subject.  There appears to have been a great mechanical power employed in the filling of these veins, as well as that necessarily required in making the first fracture 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.