been designated to him, such individual officer, or other prisoner, shall forfeit so much of the benefit of this article, as provides for his enlargement on parole or cantonment.  And it is declared, that neither the pretence that war dissolves all treaties, nor any other whatever, shall be considered as annulling or suspending this, or the next preceding article, but, on the contrary, that the state of war is precisely that for which they are provided, and during which, they are to be as sacredly observed, as the most acknowledged articles in the law of nature and nations.

LETTER CLII.—­TO MR. RITTENHOUSE, January 25,1786

TO MR. RITTENHOUSE.

Paris, January 25,1786.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of September the 28th came to hand a few days ago.  I thank you for the details on the subject of the southern and western lines.  There remains thereon, one article, however, which I will still beg you to inform me of; viz. how far is the western boundary beyond the meridian of Pittsburg?  This information is necessary, to enable me to trace that boundary in my map.  I shall be much gratified, also, with a communication of your observations on the curiosities of the western country.  It will not be difficult to induce me to give up the theory of the growth of shells, without their being the nidus of animals.  It is only an idea, and not an opinion with me.  In the Notes, with which I troubled you, I had observed that there were three opinions as to the origin of these shells. 1.  That they have been deposited even in the highest mountains, by an universal deluge. 2.  That they, with all the calcareous stones and earths, are animal remains. 3.  That they grow or shoot as crystals do.  I find that I could swallow the last opinion, sooner than either of the others; but I have not yet swallowed it.  Another opinion might have been added, that some throe of nature has forced up parts which had been the bed of the ocean.  But have we any better proof of such an effort of nature, than of her shooting a lapidific juice into the form of a shell?  No such convulsion has taken place in our time, nor within the annals of history:  nor is the distance greater, between the shooting of the lapidific juice into the form of a crystal or a diamond, which we see, and into the form of a shell, which we do not see, than between the forcing volcanic matter a little above the surface, where it is in fusion, which we see, and the forcing the bed of the sea fifteen thousand feet above the ordinary surface of the earth, which we do not see.  It is not possible to believe any of these hypotheses; and if we lean towards any of them, it should be only till some other is produced, more analogous to the known operations of nature.  In a letter to Mr. Hopkinson, I mentioned to him that the Abbe Rochon, who discovered the double refracting power in some of the natural crystals, had lately