nomy of the Globe, we may further include the circumstance, that these fractures are the most frequent channels of issue to mineral and thermal waters, whose medicinal virtues alleviate many of the diseases of the Human Frame.*

Thus in the whole machinery of Springs and Rivers, and the apparatus that is kept in action for their duration, through the instrumentality of a system of curiously constructed hills and valleys, receiving their supply occasionally from the rains of heaven, and treasuring it up in their everlasting storehouses to be dispensed perpetually by thousands of never-failing fountains, we see a provision not less striking, than it is important. So also in the adjustment of the relative quantities of Sea and Land, in such due proportions as to supply the earth by constant evaporation, without diminishing the waters of the ocean; and in the appointment of the Atmosphere to be the vehicle of this wonderful and unceasing circulation; in thus separating these waters from their native salt, (which though of the highest utility to preserve the purity of the

Dr. Daubeny has shewn that a large proportion of the thermal springs with which we are acquainted, arise through fractures situated on the great lines of dislocation of the strata. See Daubeny on Thermal Springs, Edin. Phil. Jour. April, 1832, p. 49.

Professor Hoffman has given examples of these fractures in the axis of valleys of elevation, through which chalybeate waters rise at Pyrmont, and in other valleys of Westphalia. See Pl. 67, fig. 2.

sea, renders them unfit for the support of terrestrial animals or vegetables), and transmitting them in genial showers to scatter fertility over the earth, and maintain the never-failing reservoirs of those springs and rivers by which they are again returned to mix with their parent ocean; in all these circumstances we find such evidence of nicely balanced adaptation of means to ends, of wise foresight, and benevolent intention, and infinite power, that he must be blind indeed, who refuses to recognize in them proofs of the most exalted attributes of the Creator."*

CHAPTER XXIII.

Proofs of Design in the Structure and Composition of unorganized Mineral Bodies.

MUCH of the physical history of the compound forms of unorganized mineral bodies, has been anticipated in the considerations given in our early chapters to the unstratified and crystalline rocks. It remains only to say a few words respecting the simple minerals that form the ingredients of these rocks, and the elementary bodies of which they are composed.†

* Buckland, Inaug. Lecture, p. 13.

+ The term simple mineral is applied not only to uncombined mineral substances, which are rare in Nature, such as pure native

"In crossing a heath," (says Paley,) "suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer.

Nay says the Geologist, for if the stone were a pebble, the adventures of this pebble may have been many and various, and fraught with records of physical events, that produced important changes upon the surface of our planet; and its rolled condition implies that it has undergone considerable locomotion by the action of water.

gold or silver, but also to all kinds of compound mineral bodies that present a regular crystalline structure, accompanied by definite proportions of their chemical ingredients. The difference between a simple mineral and a simple substance may be illustrated by the case of calcareous spar or crystallized carbonate of lime. The ultimate elements, viz. Calcium, Oxygen, and Carbon, are simple substances; the crystalline compound resulting from the union of these elements, in certain definite proportions, forms a simple mineral, called Carbonate of lime. The total number of simple minerals hitherto ascertained according to Berzelius is nearly six hundred, that of simple substances, or elementary principles, is fifty-four.

* I have quoted this passage, not in disparagement of the general argument of Paley, which is altogether independent of the incidental and needless comparison with which he has prefaced it, but to show the importance of the addition, that has been made by the discoveries of Geology and Mineralogy, to the evidence of the non-eternity of the earth, which so great a master pronounced to be imperfect, for lack of such information as these modern sciences have recently supplied.

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Or, should the stone be Sandstone, or part of any Conglomerate, or fragmentary stratum, made of the rounded detritus of other rocks, the ingredients of such a stone would bear similar evidence of movements by the force of water, which reduced them to the state of sand, or pebbles, and ptransorted them to their present place, before the existence of the stratum of which they form a part; consequently no such stratum can have lain in its present place for ever.

Again, should the supposed stone contain within it the petrified remains of any fossil Animal or fossil Plant, these would not only show that animal and vegetable life had preceded the formation of the rock in which they are embedded; but their organic structure might afford examples of contrivance and design, as unequivocally attesting the exercise of Intelligence and Power, as the mechanism of a Watch or Steam engine, or any other instrument produced by human art, bears evidence of intention and skill in the workman who invented and constructed them.

Lastly, should it even be Granite, or any crystalline Primary Rock, containing neither organic remains, nor fragments of other rocks more ancient than itself, it can still be shown that there was a time when even stones of this class had not assumed their present state, and consequently that there is not one of them, which can have existed, where they now are, for ever. The

Mineralogist has ascertained that Granite is a compound substance, made up of three distinct and dissimilar simple mineral bodies, Quartz, Felspar, and Mica, each presenting certain regular combinations of external form and internal structure, with physical properties peculiar to itself. And Chemical Analysis has shewn that these several bodies are made up of other bodies, all of which had a prior existence in some more simple state, before they entered on their present union in the mineral constituents of what are supposed to be the most ancient rocks accessible to human observation. The Crystallographer also has further shewn that the several ingredients of Granite, and of all other kinds of Crystalline Rocks are composed of Molecules which are invisibly minute, and that each of these Molecules is made up of still smaller and more simple Molecules, every one of them combined in fixed and definite proportions, and affording at all the successive stages of their analysis, presumptive proof that they possess determinate geometrical figures. These combinations and figures are so far from indicating the fortuitous result of accident, that they are disposed according to laws the most severely rigid, and in proportions mathematically exact.

The above Paragraphs of this Chapter excepting the first, are taken almost verbatim from the Author's MS. Notes of his Lectures on Mineralogy, bearing the date of June 1822, and he has adhered more closely to the form under which they ap