XXVII. On the state of water and aëriform matter in cavities found in certain crystals

Abstract

There are few enquiries in natural science more calculated to awaken our curiosity, than those relating to the changes which the matter composing the surface of our globe has undergone. The imagination is excited by the magnitude of the operations, by the obscurity of the phenomena, and the remoteness of the time at which they occurred; and all the intellectual powers are required to be brought into activity to find facts or analogies, or to institute experiments, by which they may be referred to known causes. The crystallizations constituting the whole of the rocks which are usually called primary, and those found in such abundance, even in the rocks which are termed secondary, prove that a considerable part of the materials of the surface of the globe must have been either fluid or aëriform; for these are the only states from which the regular arrangements of the molecules of bodies constituting crystals, can be produced.