Another example from a very distant country we have both from M. Pallas, in the Oural mountains, and from M. Patrin, who has given a mineralogical notice of the Douari, Journal de physique, Mars 1791.  Here we find the following observation.

“Parmi les chose interessantes qu’offrent les rives de Chilea, on remarque au dessous de la fonderie, des collines de petunt-fe blanc comme la neige, parseme de mica argentin de la plus grande tenuite.  Dans le voisinage de ce petunt-fe est une argile micacee, qui en est peut-etre une decomposition:  on essaya en ma presence d’en faire de la poterie qui avoit tous les caracteres du meilleurs biscuit de porcelaine.”

We have now been endeavouring to illustrate the wasting and washing away of the solid land, in the examples of decayed rocks and water worn stones, all of which are traceable, though at a great distance, to their source; we are now to consider another species of substance, which is still more particular as to the place of its production, or to its original situation, this being only in the veins of the earth.  Among all the various productions of mineral veins, we have only now in view some particular metallic substances which do not seem to waste and be dissolved, as many of them are, in being long exposed to the influence of air and rain.  When, therefore, the solid parts of the land are wasted in time, and carried away from the surface of the earth, the contents of the veins, which are occasionally found in those decayed parts of the land, are also carried away in the stream; but as the specific gravity of those metallic contents is much greater than the other stony materials moved in the stream, they sink to the bottom, and tend much more to be deposited upon the land, than those stones which had moved with them from their place.  Hence it is, that deposits, rich in those metallic substances, are formed in certain places of the soil; and these are sought for, upon account of the value of their contents.  Thus, stream tin, which in the time of the Romans formed a subject of traffic, is still found in the soil of Cornwall, even in great profusion, at this day.

Nothing can tend more to illustrate this travelling of the wasted surface of the solid land, than the contents of those mineral veins suffering in the general destruction of things, but partly saved from that total ablution by which so much of the solid parts had been made to disappear; and nothing can, in a more beautiful manner, show this order of things, than the method practised by the Cornish miners in quest of the original country of that metal, by shoding, (as it is called) upwards in running back the tract in which the stream tin had been conveyed.  This is done by trying parcels of the soil, in always mounting to see from whence the mineral below had come.

Gold is thus found almost in every country but it is only in the most sparing manner that it may thus be in general procured, by reason of the few veins in which gold is found, and the small quantity of this metal contained in those veins.  America, however, affords an example of veins rich in gold, and it is also there that quantities of stream gold is found in the soil, bearing a due proportion to the number and riches of the veins.