Theory of the Earth

irony matter, or calcareous substance. Sometimes, again, which is the case with that of Lochneagh, there does not seem to have been any penetration of those two substances. The injected flint appears to have penetrated the body of this wood, immersed at the bottom of the sea, under an immense compression of water. This appears from the wood being penetrated partially, some parts not being penetrated at all.

NOW, in the limits between those two parts, we have the most convincing proof, that it had been flint in a simple fluid state which had penetrated the wood, and not in a state of solution.

First, BECAUSE, however little of the wood is left unpenetrated, the division is always distinct between the injected part of that which is not penetrated by the fluid flint. In this case, the flinty matter has proceeded a certain length, which is marked, and no farther; and, beyond this boundary, there is no partial impregnation, nor a gradation of the flintifying operation, as must have been the case if siliceous matter had been deposited from a solution. 2dly, The termination of the flinty impregnation has assumed such a form, precisely, as would naturally happen from a fluid flint penetrating that body.

IN other specimens of this mineralizing operation, fossil wood, penetrated, more of less, with ferruginous and calcareous substances, has been afterwards penetrated with a flinty substance. In this case, with whatever different substances the woody body shall be supposed to have been penetrated in a state of solution by water, the regular structure of the plant would still have remained, with its vacuities variously filled with the petrifying substances, separated from the aqueous menstruum, and deposited in the vascular structure of the wood.

THERE cannot be a doubt with regard to the truth of this proposition; for as it is, we frequently find parts of the consolidated wood, with the vascular structure remaining perfectly

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