MINERAL RICHES 
 
 o? THE, ; 
 
 EARTH. 
 
 CAREFULLY COMPILED FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL 
 UNION, AND PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 1122 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
 NEW YORK: 599 BROADWAY. 
 
EART'ft 
 
 SCIENCES 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress,, in the year 1861, by the 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
h 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 To every intelligent observer, the ground 
 we tread on presents so much variety of sub- 
 stance that the mind naturally craves to know 
 what it is made of and how it came there. 
 
 The following pages are designed in some 
 degree to meet that desire and afford authen- 
 tic information for popular reading. 
 
 i* 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SALT AND SALTS , , 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 METALS 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES 73 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 CLAY AND SLATE 103 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 FLINT AND SAND 130 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 GRAVEL 146 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHALK CORAL MAGNESIA ASBESTOS MOULD. ... 170 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 LIME MARBLE GRANITE 195 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS 218 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 GEMS 246 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 FOSSILS 276 
 
EARTH'S RICHES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 MR. GOODMAN had a large family of sons 
 and daughters, whose education he delighted 
 to superintend; and young friends in abun- 
 dance joined the social circle from time to 
 time, sharing in their pursuits and partaking 
 of their amusements. 
 
 As is common among intelligent minds, 
 their attention was sometimes attracted to 
 subjects which, for a season, engrossed all their 
 leisure time; and one summer was very hap- 
 pily spent in constructing what they called 
 "a friendship-grotto," inasmuch as the stones, 
 (minerals and fossils with which it was deco- 
 rated were contributed by various beloved 
 friends and relations, who kindly interested 
 
10 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 themselves in juvenile undertakings. Mr. 
 Goodhjaxi .was *as \zealpus as any one; and, as 
 'his garden was situated among the inequalities 
 of ground near a chain of hills, an appropriate 
 spot was soon selected, where a sudden rising 
 of the surface permitted the hollowing of a 
 cave near a small spring of water. This oave 
 was tastefully lined with specimens of all 
 sorts. Stalactites hung from the roof; spark- 
 ling ores adorned the sides, with fossil woods, 
 zoophytes and shells; and different-coloured 
 pebbles studded the floor. A summer-house 
 was built over the top, to which access was 
 made by a gentle ascent behind the grotto, 
 and here some glazed shelves and partitioned 
 drawers received those fragile materials which 
 could not be exposed to the air, or were so 
 valuable as to be guarded under lock and 
 key. 
 
 When all was completed, the interior of the 
 grotto was furnished with a rustic table and 
 seats ; and it became the favourite resort for 
 the solitary students in the family, or for the 
 afternoon social gatherings, when in summer 
 weather they loved to read and work together, 
 and often refreshed themselves with fruit or 
 tea, after their labours, in this cool retreat. 
 
SALT AND SALTS. 11 
 
 At length, when the excitement of building 
 and the novelty of possession had in some 
 measure subsided, and all their friends had 
 duly praised the ingenuity and admired the 
 results of the young people's handiwork, Mr. 
 Goodman proposed that they should take 
 occasion to derive some permanent advantage 
 from the time they had so happily spent, and 
 the presents they had received, not only from 
 friends at home, but in foreign countries, of 
 minerals peculiar to different localities and 
 of widely different composition and use ; for, 
 till the subject is studied, few persons, per- 
 haps, are aware how much their comfort and 
 health depend upon substances composing the 
 very ground they tread upon. 
 
 This proposition was hailed with general 
 satisfaction ; and Mr. Goodman, who had de- 
 voted much of his own youthful leisure to 
 mineralogy, and had lately been watching for 
 an opportunity of imparting some of his taste 
 to his children, at one of the evening meetings 
 for tea entered upon the subject by asking 
 which of the objects around should be first 
 discussed. 
 
 Edward Goodman, the eldest son, referred 
 to salt, coals and metals, as certainly very 
 
12 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 useful, and his sister Alice to clay, earth and 
 gravel, as necessary for the growth of fruit 
 and vegetables. 
 
 Mr. Goodman said that it would help their 
 memories to classify the subjects, and that, as 
 they had just been eating salt with their early 
 spring radishes, he would proceed to discuss 
 that first. 
 
 He accordingly stated that COMMON SALT 
 has some very remarkable qualities. It is a 
 great preservative against the putrefaction 
 and decay of dead animals, yet is so injurious 
 to living worms and snails that it speedily 
 destroys and dissolves them. In moderation, 
 it is needful with food; yet eaten in very 
 large quantities it causes death, as an irritant 
 poison, both to men and animals. It pre- 
 serves plants and fruits when no longer grow- 
 ing, and yet is so mischievous to living vege- 
 tation that the most expressive mode of de- 
 scribing a fertile country abandoned to bar- 
 renness is to say, as the Scriptures often 
 assert, " It is sown with salt." Thus, in the 
 book of Judges (ix. 45) it is related that when 
 Abimelech took the city of Shechem, he de- 
 stroyed it, "and sowed it with salt" to render 
 the ground unfruitful. 
 
COVENANT OF SALT. 13 
 
 Salt must have been very anciently known 
 to mankind. It was one of the original che- 
 mical deposits made in the ocean, and the ear- 
 liest inhabitants of the East had access to it, in 
 the form of rock-salt. It is mentioned in the 
 earliest books of Scripture; and, in the law 
 given by Moses, it was prescribed to be min- 
 gled with the Jewish sacrifices. A store of 
 salt was kept in the Temple, in an apartment 
 appropriated to that purpose. 
 
 According to Oriental usages, to partake 
 jointly of salt was a pledge of peace and 
 friendship : so that when once shared, even 
 unwittingly, the bitterest foes were safe 
 from mutual injury. This accounts for the 
 phrase, frequent in Eastern tales, "He has 
 eaten salt with him;" and the same mean- 
 ing belongs to the Scripture expression "a 
 covenant of salt." The bond of friendship 
 and reconciliation was renewed by each 
 fresh sacrifice under the Jewish dispensa- 
 tion. " Neither shalt thou suffer the salt of 
 the covenant of thy God to be lacking from 
 thy meat-offering." (Lev. ii. 13.) "It is a 
 covenant of salt," or friendship, "forever." 
 (Num. xviii. 19.) " The Lord God gave the 
 
14 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 kingdom over Israel to David by a covenant 
 of salt. 1 ' 2 Chron. xiii. 5. 
 
 We now no longer need the symbolic salt 
 in our approaches to God's mercy-seat, be- 
 cause we are told in the New Testament that 
 Jesus has offered himself a sacrifice for all 
 sins, and is now the perfect Intercessor and 
 Mediator for all who by faith come unto 
 God through him. 
 
 Alice inquired whether the phrase in Eng- 
 lish history, "sitting below the salt/' meant 
 the same thing as the Oriental pledge of 
 friendship. 
 
 Mr. Goodman answered that that refers to 
 the olden time, when a chief, and all his 
 household, dined at the same table, but he 
 and his family and guests sat at the upper 
 end, above the salt-bowl, which was usually 
 placed in the middle: hence to be above or 
 below the salt indicated the rank of the per- 
 son so seated. 
 
 It is supposed, from the descriptions of 
 Herodotus, that the ancient Abyssinians used 
 to enclose their dead in masses of rock-salt, 
 which is very common about that part of 
 Africa. It is still employed as money there, 
 and also in Thibet. The slave-caravans 
 
SEA-SALT. 15 
 
 across the deserts of Northern Africa carry 
 rock-salt in great cubical masses as mer- 
 chandise. 
 
 Salt is very extensively distributed both in 
 the Old and New Worlds ; in some regions in 
 its fossil state, as rock-salt; in others, in brine 
 lakes or springs, and thin incrustations formed 
 by evaporation through the sun's heat. Wher- 
 ever the sea comes, people may, if they choose, 
 get its salt, by boiling and evaporating its 
 waters. This process, however, yields But a 
 coarse-grained kind, needing much purifica- 
 tion, so that it is generally abandoned as civil- 
 ization advances. The Turk's Island salt is 
 of this kind. Many countries depend entirely 
 upon foreign supplies of salt, and it is then 
 an expensive article : in India fifty cents a 
 pound is no uncommon price. Salt has been 
 sometimes so heavily taxed as to occasion 
 much distress among the poor. 
 
 Salt became excessively dear during the war 
 of the American Revolution. In a few places 
 the inhabitants procure all their salt from the 
 ashes of vegetables. The annual production 
 of the English mines, from which the Western 
 world is largely supplied, is about five hun- 
 dred thousand tons, most of which comes down 
 
16 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 the river Weaver to Liverpool. The annual 
 consumption of salt by an adult man or woman 
 has been estimated at sixteen pounds. 
 
 Edward here interrupted to ask if all sea- 
 water contained the same quantity of salt. 
 
 Mr. Goodman told him that it varies con- 
 siderably. The water of the Baltic Sea is 
 reckoned to contain one-sixty-fourth of its 
 weight of salt ; that of the sea between Eng- 
 land and Flanders, one-thirty-second ; and the 
 sea-tvater on the coast of Spain, one-sixteenth 
 of its weight ; and it varies again elsewhere. 
 
 In the heart of the American continent are 
 extensive deserts and lakes of salt water, the 
 largest of which is Utah Lake. Such exist 
 also in Chinese Tartary. 
 
 It is a rule in geography that whenever a 
 body of water has no outlet to the sea it must 
 be salt, because its rivers are always bringing 
 down salt from the rocks around. The ocean 
 is salt, because it necessarily retains all the 
 salt that flows into it. Bodies of water like 
 the Dead Sea, which lie low and under a hot 
 sun, are necessarily salter than others. Salt 
 water also being heavier than fresh water, the 
 bottom of the Mediterranean Sea is salter 
 than the top. This has been tested by experi- 
 
SALT-LICKS. 17 
 
 ment. At a depth of six hundred and seventy 
 fathoms the salt water was found to be four 
 times as heavy as at the surface. 
 
 Salt seems quite a necessary of life to 
 human beings; for we pat it into all our food, 
 while in nature.it occurs in milk and other 
 substances. Almost all graminivorous ani- 
 mals are fond of it, and a mixture of it in 
 their food seems beneficial. The wild animals 
 of the forest repair regularly to the salt-licks, 
 where salt waters issue from the rocks and 
 form pools or marsh places, and here the 
 hunters lie in wait for them. Some are called 
 deer licks, others bear licks, and others 
 buffalo licks. Eegularly-beaten tracks or 
 paths descend to them, which have been used 
 by the animals from very ancient days, and 
 form the best ways to cross the mountains. 
 In similar licks the mammoths and masto- 
 dons of old were frequently mired and lost, 
 and their skeletons are found at the present 
 day. All animals need salt in some measure. 
 It is, however, said to be injurious to poultry; 
 and if human beings feed too much upon salt 
 food, they suffer from scurvy and similar dis- 
 orders, while the drinking of sea-water has 
 often caused madness and death. The prophet 
 
 B 2* 
 
18 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 Elisha healed waters by casting salt into them ; 
 which seems strange, for salt water is not fit 
 to drink, and does not generally improve the 
 land. But perhaps a remedy apparently so 
 unlikely may have been commanded by God 
 as a clearer exercise of his miraculous power. 
 
 There is more in the Bible about salt than 
 many might suppose. It is mentioned as a 
 familiar substance in the book of Job, (vi. 6,) 
 one of the earliest known records. "Salt- 
 pits" are named by Zephaniah, (ii. 9,) as well 
 as "the city of salt" by Joshua, (xv. 62.) 
 The " valley of salt," (2 Sam. iii. 13,) " a 
 salt land," (Jer. xvii. 6,) "salt marshes," 
 (Ezek. xlvii. 11,) and a "pillar of salt," (Gen. 
 xix. 26,) are all spoken of in the books of 
 Moses, Samuel and Jeremiah. All the va- 
 rious modes of procuring salt seem thus 
 early to have been in use, while its common 
 abundance is still further shown by Ezra's 
 statement (vii. 22) that King Artaxerxes 
 directed his treasurers to supply for the temple 
 at Jerusalem "salt without prescribing how 
 much." 
 
 Salt was valuable enough to bear a tax in 
 the time of the Maccabees, as it did also in 
 the reign of Ancus Martius, the fourth king 
 
ENGLISH SALT-MINES. 19 
 
 of Borne, B.C. 640; and the Eomans took 
 tribute from the Droitwich mines, in England, 
 from their first settlement, paying their sol- 
 diers partly with salt. Hence, it is said, we 
 derive our word salary (from sal, salt) for the 
 payment of work. 
 
 These Droitwich springs are mentioned in 
 Doomsday Book, and are yet inexhaustible, 
 rising from beds of solid rock-salt through 
 strata of gypsum from one hundred and 
 twenty to one hundred and fifty feet thick. 
 The salt-mines at Northwich, in England, are 
 two hundred and twenty feet deep, lying in 
 two beds, alternating with gypsum and marl. 
 The salt-rock is red, and so hard as to need 
 gunpowder. In the eastern part of France 
 beds of rock-salt have been discovered, lying 
 in regular order over one another, like beds 
 of coal, to a- great depth in the ground. The 
 borings through these beds, by which the salt 
 water is allowed to ascend to the surface, are 
 one thousand feet deep. The salt-wells of 
 Syracuse, in the State of New York, sink to 
 masses of rock-salt in a very ancient forma- 
 tion, which contains also gypsum; and gypsum 
 and salt usually go together in geology. At 
 Saltzburg, in Southwestern Virginia, there is 
 
20 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 a deep valley filled to the depth of five hun- 
 dred or one thousand feet with red clay, gyp- 
 sum and rock-salt ; and all that part of the 
 country is now supplied with salt from thence. 
 The hundreds of salt-wells sunk during the 
 last fifty years along the valleys of the Mo- 
 nongahela, Youghiogheny, Conemaugh, Alle- 
 ghany, Beaver, Muskingum, and Mahoning 
 Kivers in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, and 
 along the Big and Little Kanawha and Sandy 
 Kivers in Virginia and Kentucky, descend 
 through the rocks of the coal-measures and 
 obtain their salt water from the formations 
 immediately underneath, where lakes or sheets 
 of it exist in the bottoms of the basins. When 
 this salt water ascends to the surface, through 
 natural crevices or through artificial auger- 
 holes, it is often accompanied with coal oil 
 and coal gas ; and these valuable natural pro- 
 ducts of the earth are sometimes used to boil 
 the salt water at the mouth of the well. It 
 does not follow that all salt springs must be 
 at the level of the ocean, although they must 
 be in the bottoms of valleys ; for the salt lakes 
 of Utah are in valleys elevated many thousand 
 feet above sea-level. The central parts of the 
 continent consist of elevated plains, covered 
 
PILLAR OF SALT. 21 
 
 with gravel and a scanty shrubby vegetation. 
 "Where much rain falls, salts are washed out 
 of the soil, and vegetation is abundant. Many 
 parts of the world are barren for want of rain, 
 and are very salt. The Isle 'of Ormus, in the 
 Persian Gulf, consists almost entirely of rock- 
 salt. There is no sweet water, nor grass; and, 
 though once a place of trade for the Portu- 
 guese and Persians, it is now almost deserted, 
 as it produces nothing but fine white salt. 
 This sometimes lies two inches thick upon the 
 ground. 
 
 Perhaps the largest salt-mines in the world 
 are those of Cracow, in Poland, extending 
 nearly a league under ground. Many of 
 the workmen and horses live there entirely. 
 There are cottages and chapels, statues and 
 crucifixes, before which lamps are kept con- 
 tinually burning. When well lighted up, these 
 lamps look very glittering and beautiful, as 
 the crystals reflect the light in splendid 
 coloured rays. 
 
 Sacred history informs us that, as the family 
 of Lot were fleeing from the doomed cities of 
 the plain, his wife " looked back" and "became 
 a pillar of salt." That an object has been seen 
 which was said to be the .pillar into which Lot's 
 
22 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 wife was turned, and which the beholders be- 
 lieved to be such, there is little doubt. In one 
 of the Apocryphal books allusion is made to 
 the destruction of the five cities: "Whose 
 land, for a testimony of their wickedness, is 
 desolate and smoketh to this day, and the 
 trees bear fruits that ripen not ; and a stand- 
 ing pillar of salt is a monument of an incredu- 
 lous soul." This passage might be sufficient 
 for the faith of Eoman Catholics, but would 
 have no weight with Protestants. 
 
 That a column of solid salt should be found 
 in a region where there are " precipices of pure 
 crystallized fossil salt forty or fifty feet high 
 and several hundred feet in length,"* is by no 
 means incredible ; but there is no satisfactory 
 evidence of the existence of any visible memorial 
 of the judgment which came upon Lot's wife. 
 
 Indeed, it is remarkable that the scenes and 
 events which the sacred history records should 
 be so rarely marked by permanent visible monu- 
 ments. To those who receive the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures as of divine authority, their testimony is 
 conclusive. "If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be persuaded though 
 one rose from the dead." 
 
 *Dr. Robinson, edit. 1841, vol. ii. p. 482. 
 
MAKING OF SALT. 23 
 
 Rock-salt is generally either of a pale red, 
 green, blue, gray, or yellow color, and requires 
 purifying to assume the delicate hue suited 
 for domestic use. Only small cubes here and 
 there are white. It is purified by dissolving 
 the rock-salt in water, or by boiling the brine 
 from the salt springs over and over -again, 
 and evaporating, or suffering the water to fly 
 off in vapour. The salt liquor is generally 
 boiled in large shallow vessels, and the salt 
 continually stirred, to prevent it from crystal- 
 lizing as it granulates. It is afterwards dried, 
 and sold in cakes of convenient size. 
 
 Salt could be made in the chemist's labora- 
 tory if it were worth while to do so ; but it is 
 too abundant in nature to need artificial pro- 
 duction. Chemically, it is a chloride of sodium. 
 It used to be termed muriate of soda, but ac- 
 cording to more accurate modern nomenclature 
 its proper name is, as stated, chloride of sodium. 
 There is generally a sediment, or residue of 
 insoluble matter, from most brine. Salt pre- 
 pared from sea- water leaves a mixture of car- 
 bonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia, 
 with fine flinty sand. Rock-salt generally 
 leaves sulphate of lime, (gypsum,) or some sort 
 of marly earth. 
 
24 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 Salt water does not generally freeze so soon 
 as fresh water : it requires a greater degree 
 of cold to produce ice. Yet the arctic regions 
 afford abundant proof that it freezes very 
 completely under severe cold; and salt is 
 added to snow and ice by confectioners to 
 quicken the process of freezing their creams. 
 In the salt steppes of Orenburg there is a 
 remarkable cave, called the Freezing Cave, 
 from the fact that during the summer months 
 the surrounding region of salt renders its 
 atmosphere so cold that snow and icicles line 
 it at that season, though in the winter the 
 same cave is so much warmer than the ex- 
 ternal air that the Eussians state they could 
 sleep iu it without their sheepskin cloaks. 
 
 There is a coarse-grained salt that fisher- 
 men use for salting fish, known also to most 
 housekeepers by the name of bay salt, which 
 is merely salt less carefully stirred in boiling 
 and purifying than the finer sort. Both that 
 and the finer kinds equally preserve fish or 
 meat; but for packing and exporting such 
 provisions the larger grains are best, as they 
 do not soon dissolve, and therefore melt only 
 as the juices of the meat absorb them. Bay 
 salt is thus exceedingly useful for long voy- 
 
SALT AN ANTISEPTIC. 25 
 
 ages, and, moreover, is used for preserving 
 foreign skins during their travels to the 
 tanner. Great quantities of salted hides are 
 brought from South America. Damask roses, 
 too, are. imported for the chemist and perfumer, 
 mixed with salt, which does not affect their 
 sweet scent in the least : indeed, much of their 
 colour is retained, as may be noticed when 
 making rose tea from the chemist's stores. 
 
 From the earliest periods, salt was used for 
 preserving the bodies of animals; and even the 
 corpses of men, were placed in salt or brine 
 when removed to any distance for funeral 
 rites. Pharnaces, the unnatural son of Mithri- 
 dates, King of Pontus, not only joined the 
 Konians against his father, but, after procur- 
 ing his death, sent the body packed in salt to 
 Pompey at Rome. In the fifth century, the 
 monks were accustomed to preserve the heads 
 of martyrs in salt ; and animals for zoological 
 collections were successfully kept in brine for 
 a long period. Of course, butterflies and birds 
 would lose the beauty of their down and 
 feathers in brine : they would recover their 
 proper looks after being wet. 
 
 Soda and muriatic acid are both extracted 
 from this useful mineral. Salt thrown into 
 
26 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 the oven where common pottery is baked 
 produces a glaze upon it. It improves the 
 whiteness and clearness of glass, gives hard- 
 ness to soap, and is used both in melting 
 metals and dyeing calicoes and stuffs. It 
 quenches flame, and is therefore useful to stop 
 a chimney on fire; while wood thoroughly 
 steeped in salt water is very slow to burn. 
 Nor is this all. Salt-water baths are often 
 recommended to strengthen weak limbs ; for 
 salt purifies the skin, and, by producing a 
 gentle irritation, increases its healthy action. 
 Some of the salt may also penetrate the pores, 
 so as to mix with the blood and supply any 
 deficiency there. 
 
 The young people looked so surprised at 
 this statement that Mr. Goodman explained 
 that salt should be in the blood of most 
 healthy animals, mankind included. Dr. 
 Livingstone perceived the salt taste .even of 
 fresh animal food, after he had long been de- 
 prived of it ; and the absence of salt, which it 
 was sometimes difficult to procure in the in- 
 terior of Africa, created an intense longing 
 for meat or milk, the salt in either of which 
 seemed to supply the want in a great measure. 
 Most people can remember noticing a very 
 
BORAX. 27 
 
 salt taste when the mouth bleeds at all copi- 
 ously, and are surprised when the doctor says 
 that it is all right. 
 
 Salt, though rather painful when applied to 
 a wound, does not really do mischief, but fre- 
 quently promotes its healthy healing. The 
 writers of the New Testament often use salt 
 as an emblem of wisdom: "Let your speech 
 be always with grace, seasoned with salt;" 
 and of purification, " Ye are the salt of the 
 earth," while consistently spreading a useful 
 influence; "but if the salt have lost its sa- 
 vour," if professed Christians yield to the cor- 
 ruptions of the world, they lead others astray, 
 and thus diffuse evil instead of good; and 
 our Lord adds the fearful doom, " it is thence- 
 forth good for nothing but to be cast out." 
 
 Many other substances are called salts, such 
 as alum, borax, soda, nitre and saltpetre, 
 which, however, are seldom found in a native 
 pure state, but are obtained from various clays 
 and earths in which they largely mingle. 
 Borax is found in the East and in South 
 America, and is much used as a flux for melt- 
 ing and purifying various substances, and in 
 soldering metals. Saltpetre is obtained from 
 
28 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 Bengal, and is used in making gunpowder, 
 signal-lights, dyeing, purifying metals and 
 curing meat. Nitric and sulphuric acids are 
 both procured from it, which, together with 
 nitre itself, are largely used in medicine, 
 though they are both poisonous, and, applied 
 outwardly, rapidly corrode and consume the 
 flesh. 
 
 Chloride of lime is a salt of rather recent 
 discovery, and, in solution, is particularly 
 valuable for its disinfecting properties, ren- 
 dering a foul atmosphere speedily pure. Hence 
 it is much used in hospitals, and in cleansing 
 drains and places which generate unwhole- 
 some and disagreeable effluvia. It was dis- 
 covered by Sir Humphry Davy during his 
 researches upon gases. Chlorite, the mineral 
 from which the salt is extracted, is composed 
 of multitudes of little shining spangles which 
 fall to powder under the pressure of the fingers. 
 It is of a greenish colour, and occurs in Ger- 
 many, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and 
 Java, mingled with other substances, such as 
 clay-slate and sulphates of iron and arsenic. 
 Chloride of lime is much used as a bleaching- 
 powder. The paper-makers boil their rags in 
 
CHLORIDE. 29 
 
 it to render them perfectly colourless : " there- 
 fore/' said Mr. Goodman, "your pretty new 
 print dress was spoiled by some being spilled 
 on it, as well as the damask curtains." 
 
 He further remarked that all through the 
 works of God in nature "one thing seems set 
 over another :" there are antidotes to poisons, 
 correctives of disagreeables, and promoters of 
 all that is pure and pleasant, reminding us of 
 the power of God's grace to change the vilest 
 hearts and the most unholy tempers by the 
 purifying influences of the Holy Spirit, as the 
 Apostle Paul teaches us in his Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. After describing some of the 
 worst of sinners, he exclaims, " Such were 
 some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are 
 sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of 
 the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God/' 
 1 Cor. vi. 11. 
 
 The young people seemed so much interested 
 in these observations upon salt, that Mr. 
 Goodman determined, while sharing in their 
 occupations, to avail himself of any circum- 
 stance which would introduce the study of 
 kindred topics, knowing that formal lectures 
 at set times are often forgotten, while the 
 3* 
 
30 SALT AND SALTS. 
 
 mind eagerly seizes and easily retains inform- 
 ation upon the materials which employ the 
 labour of the hands. His own mental stores 
 and still lively taste rendered him a fountain 
 of wisdom, which could be readily drawn upon 
 at pleasure. 
 
TINKERING. 31 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 METALS. 
 
 EDWARD considered himself "fond of ex- 
 perimental philosophy." Alice used to laugh 
 at him for possessing what she called "a 
 genius for tinkering ;" and now and then she 
 laughed with good reason, for, in his great 
 zeal for experiments, he did not always prove 
 himself a prudent philosopher. He had 
 visited some metal- works; and, interested 
 with the various processes he had witnessed 
 of casting, welding and hammering, he be- 
 thought himself of some lead he possessed, and 
 fancied he could cast it into shape and im- 
 press upon it sundry devices, which would 
 look much prettier than a plain mass of dull 
 metal. 
 
 To work he went, and was busily occupied 
 all one holiday morning, moulding, casting 
 and stamping to his heart's content. But, 
 alas ! when he came to exhibit the result of 
 
32 
 
 METALS. 
 
 his skill, his father looked grave, for the 
 young metallurgist had used a silver half- 
 dollar and some foreign silver coins for his 
 dies, and they were much injured by the pro- 
 cess. Edward could not tell why the real 
 coins looked black, and asked the reason. 
 
 " Because/' replied Mr. Goodman, "the sur- 
 faces of your silver coins have amalgamated, 
 that is, united with the lead. You should not 
 venture on such an experiment as this with- 
 out knowing a little about the chemistry of 
 such combinations. That black tint is actually 
 the lead, which has mixed with the silver and 
 alloyed all the surface. No common rubbing 
 with plate-powder or leather will restore 
 them. You cannot get rid of the lead till you 
 grind down to a new surface, and the coins 
 will then have lost some of their silver and 
 be so much less valuable. Lead and silver are 
 almost always found together in mines; and it 
 is always a troublesome business to separate 
 them." 
 
 "Well," sighed Edward, "I must keep my 
 half-dollar, then, as a monument of my foolish 
 ignorance." 
 
 "If you preserve it as a reminder to con- 
 sider before you act, it will purchase you 
 
COMPOUND METALS. 33 
 
 many a half-dollar's worth of wisdom, both in 
 intellectual pursuits and moral actions : so you 
 need not sigh too heavily over the loss of your 
 money." 
 
 " But, father, will you tell me a little about 
 metals ? I never thought of silver and lead 
 mixing together, as I found this morning they 
 will do." 
 
 " You forget, then, the preparation of the 
 metallic compounds you saw at Chicopee, 
 when they were mixing bell-metal, queen's 
 metal, pewter, pinchbeck, brass and bronze?" 
 
 Alice and the rest of the family here joined 
 them, and, as they had watched Edward's ex- 
 periments, they were curious to know the 
 reason of the failure he lamented ; and their 
 father led them to the grotto, that he might 
 be able to illustrate his remarks on metals 
 by reference to the numerous ores they had 
 there interspersed about the walls. 
 
 Mr. Goodman, looking more particularly at 
 Edward, remarked that all METALS cannot be 
 mixed together ; but new compounds of metal 
 are frequently invented, consisting sometimes 
 of two only, and sometimes of several, in 
 various proportions, according to the quality 
 desired. Thus, copper and tin form not only 
 c 
 
34 METALS. 
 
 bronze, but bell-metal ; tin and lead make pew- 
 ter ; and small quantities of bismuth, zinc ; or 
 other metals added to these will produce con- 
 siderable change either in appearance or quality. 
 Fusibility, or the capacity to melt, is a very 
 important and* useful quality common to all 
 metals in different degrees, as well as malle- 
 ability and ductility, or their capacity for 
 being beaten or drawn out, rolled into plates, 
 bars and wire. All metals, too, have some 
 degree of shining hue, termed the metallic 
 lustre. They are not generally transparent, 
 though, as leaf gold when held up to the sun 
 transmits a green light through it, and silver 
 a white light, it is probable that other metals 
 might, if equally thin, also be thus partially 
 transparent ; but few of the other metals will 
 bear being so much beaten out. 
 
 No metals have ever yet been decomposed, 
 or divided into simpler substances, but are 
 already what chemists call elements in their 
 simplest state. There are several theories of 
 their formation, each of which presents part 
 of the truth. One theory supposes that metals 
 have been deposited from above, by earthy 
 or metallic salts held in solution by water, 
 just as the mineral waters of the present day 
 
ORIGIN OF METALS. 35 
 
 contain iron, copper, lead, &c. This is un- 
 doubtedly true of many mineral veins, as may 
 be shown by their being composed of regu- 
 larly-deposited linings of ore and spar on their 
 walls. Other persons have fancied that the 
 metals were the result of sublimed vapours or 
 exhalations, as the mercury seems to be in the 
 mines of Austria ; and some again prefer to 
 consider spars and metallic ores as injected, 
 while melted by heat, into these veins. Elec- 
 tricity or magnetism seems to have contri- 
 buted to the formation of metals, either the 
 general magnetism and electricity of the 
 earth, or local currents of such forces, pro- 
 duced by surrounding influences. All metals 
 crystallize into definite forms, and some into 
 more than one form. 
 
 This question, as to how the metallic ores were 
 formed, or, more properly, how they were de- 
 posited, is one which naturally rises in every 
 thinking mind, and is frequently asked by 
 those who examine collections of ores; for 
 metals are scarcely ever found in a native or 
 pure state, but are mixed with a great va- 
 riety of mineral substances. Inquiring minds 
 are trying to ascertain the cause of the metal- 
 lic deposits, and the mode of their accumula- 
 
36 METALS. 
 
 tion ; but, though many interesting and inge- 
 nious theories have been devised and many 
 curious facts discovered in the course of in- 
 quiry, no entirely satisfactory answer has yet 
 been found. It is most probable that the 
 metals were made with all the other chemical 
 elements of matter when the world was cre- 
 ated; for tin, iron, copper, chrome, cobalt, 
 manganese, titanium, arsenic and one or two 
 other metals have been detected in the oldest 
 rock formations with which we are ac- 
 quainted. Yet there are many metallic veins 
 or streams of ore, which have evidently been 
 deposited during convulsions of nature of a 
 much more recent date than the geological 
 age of the rocks in which they are found. 
 Such are the copper veins of Lake Superior, 
 and the tin and copper veins of Cornwall. 
 They vary greatly in width, the Cornish veins 
 from one inch to thirty feet. In other countries 
 much wider veins occur ; but even the narrow 
 veins are often rich enough to be quite worth 
 working, especially as they are so very deep 
 that they have never yet been fathomed, or 
 exhausted of their contents, even three thou- 
 sand feet below the surface. The lately-dis- 
 covered Washoe silver vein, on the west coast 
 
METALS OF SCRIPTURE. 37 
 
 of North America, worth from three thousand 
 dollars to nine thousand dollars a ton, is only 
 eight inches wide. The great iron-ore bed of 
 Marquette, in Michig'an, is one thousand feet 
 wide. In following the course of veins, they are 
 generally observed to slant downwards from the 
 commencement. Sometimes they widen as they 
 are explored, and a large deposit is reached, 
 whence several veins seem to have started. 
 Other veins become narrower, descending, and 
 stop altogether; or spar, or some other mate- 
 rial, is substituted for the metallic deposit. 
 
 In the earliest records of man, frequent 
 mention has been made of metals. Even in 
 the description of the garden of Eden, gold 
 good gold is particularized ; while Job says, 
 " Surely there is a vein for silver, and a place 
 for gold in the earth. Iron and brass are dug 
 out of stones," (Job xxviii. 1,) suggesting the 
 idea that mining-operations were known from 
 the first. Indeed, Tubal-cain, the instructor 
 of workers in brass and iron, lived before the 
 flood. Gen. iv. 22. 
 
 These metallic veins are generally enclosed 
 between hard, dark-coloured crusts, which 
 miners term the walls of the vein. There is 
 mostly, too, a small vein of a whitish clayey 
 
 4 
 
38 METALS. 
 
 substance running down one or other of the 
 walls. Besides this, most metallic veins con- 
 tain a good deal of spar and quartz, either 
 loose or crystallized against the sides. Occa- 
 sionally large empty spaces occur, lined with 
 beautiful crystals. Experience, of course, in 
 some degree enables miners to learn from 
 appearances whether the veins are likely to 
 continue to bear metal or not ; but these ap- 
 pearances are often so fallacious that mining 
 is at all times an uncertain experiment. It is 
 also hazardous and costly, from the great 
 depth under ground at which the work must 
 often be carried on. 
 
 In Cornwall, copper and tin are seldom 
 found nearer to the surface than eighty 
 feet. If tin is discovered then, perhaps, in 
 descending eighty or one hundred feet lower, 
 copper alone exhibits itself; but tin is sel- 
 dom found below copper. In Tennessee, the 
 black copper-ore is at the base of the hills, 
 and under it the veins are a poorer mixture 
 of sulphur, copper and iron. Another diffi- 
 culty arises from a second system of veins of a 
 totally different metal often crossing the first 
 and altering the direction of the east and west 
 veins, " heaving them out of their course/' 
 
CHANGE OF VEINS. 
 
 39 
 
 as the miners say, sometimes one hundred or 
 even five hundred feet north or south of their 
 true place ; so that they can be found again 
 only after long, laborious and expensive search : 
 in one case forty years have been thus occu- 
 pied. In many districts these heaving s happen 
 several times to the same veins, to the exceed- 
 ing perplexity of the workmen, especially when 
 numerous veins thus cross each other. 
 
 At the point of crossing there is generally 
 a considerable change of composition in the 
 contents of veins, so as to excite some expecta- 
 
 SECTION OF TIN-CROFT MINE. 
 
 tion of a crossing vein. Indeed, the same mine- 
 ral vein varies so much in passing through 
 different sorts of strata, or layers of rock, that 
 the miner looks for a change of metal with 
 every marked change of ground or " country." 
 
40 METALS. 
 
 In Cornwall, the copper-ore of a vein passing 
 through clay slate becomes richer on entering 
 granite, or, what is more remarkable, produces 
 copper-ore differently mineralized. In the 
 Lake-Superior region, the veins which all 
 cross the rocks nearly at right angles show 
 an abundance of copper only while they are 
 passing through sandstone, but become bar- 
 ren when they enter the trap. All metals 
 are not found in these curious veins ; for some 
 are in large horizontal layers or beds ; but 
 these are generally the ores of iron, lead, zinc 
 and manganese combined with other sub- 
 stances. Some few metals are found in the 
 sources or beds of old rivers : gold especially 
 is thus discovered. Metals do not often show 
 themselves on the surface of the ground, 
 though occasionally the earth is sufficiently 
 stained or coloured with the rust produced 
 by the damp of the atmosphere to suggest 
 that iron or copper may lie beneath. The 
 show which iron makes for itself and its allied 
 metals is called its " gossan." 
 
 The beds of metal worked as mines are 
 generally rather low ; but all the best known 
 silver-mines are situated in high table-land, 
 which would not be inhabited but for the 
 
GOLD AND SILVER. 41 
 
 mineral treasures to be obtained. Thus, at 
 Pasco, in Peru, there are silver-mines with 
 some thousand mouths opening into the very 
 houses of the owners. A complete network 
 of silver veins appears to spread there beneath 
 the surface of the earth, one of which is nine 
 thousand six hundred feet long and four hun- 
 dred and twelve feet broad. Gold is frequently 
 found near the surface of the ground. The 
 Gold Coast of Africa is so named from its 
 abundance in the sands. The gold-fields of 
 Peru, California and Australia occasionally 
 yield large nuggets, or lumps, of the precious 
 metal, weighing several ounces and even many 
 pounds ; but they are remarkable and rare. 
 Gold occurs in every quarter of the globe, and 
 nearly in every country, though not always so 
 plenteously as to be worth the expense of dig- 
 ging for it. 
 
 "What! Is there gold in Vermont and 
 Massachusetts ?" exclaimed Edward and Alice 
 both together, in amazement. 
 
 " Yes ; and in Virginia and North and South 
 Carolina and Georgia also," said Mr. Good- 
 man. The United States Government has an 
 assay-office in North Carolina for the native 
 gold. The Dahlonega and other mines there 
 
42 METALS. 
 
 are very rich, and the new hydraulic process 
 of washing out the gold and gravel by tearing 
 the hills to pieces with tremendous jets of 
 water brought in canals and pipes for many 
 miles, which has revolutionized gold-mining 
 in California, is 'now being introduced into the 
 Carolina gold-fields with great profit. Almost 
 every river which flows into the Atlantic 
 brings down small quantities of gold. But 
 the Ptocky Mountains seem to be the home of 
 gold, from which, in the future, the world is to 
 be supplied. It is a proof of God's superin- 
 tending care that the most useful metals gold, 
 silver, iron and copper are freely distributed 
 all over the world, and generally in situations 
 that can be got at without much difficulty: 
 hence, throughout history they are continually 
 named as substances of common use. Lead 
 and tin are abundant in certain localities, 
 where they were discovered in very early 
 times and imported to other countries. Both 
 were known to the ancient Egyptians. The 
 Cornish tin-mines, in all probability, supplied 
 the luxurious city of Tyre, (Ezek. xxvii. 12 ;) 
 but the tin found among the six varieties of 
 metal in the spoils of the Midianites by Moses 
 may have come from the East Indies. (Num. 
 
NUMBER OF METALS. 43 
 
 xxxi. 22.) The lead-mines of Derbyshire 
 (England) were worked long before the Eoman 
 invasion ; but lead was used as a writing ma- 
 terial in the time of Job, (xix. 24,) and its 
 great weight was remarked by Moses, when 
 he sang at the Exodus, " They sank as lead in 
 the mighty waters." Exod. xv. 10. 
 
 Quicksilver or mercury, antimony, zinc and 
 platinum, are seldom found in their metallic 
 state, but are extracted from their ores by 
 various laborious processes ; while the metals 
 forming the bases of several metalloids alu- 
 minum, silicum, sodium, &c. are never pro- 
 cured except by artificial means, and then 
 some of these are so quickly changed by the 
 influence of the atmosphere that they are 
 only slowly coming into use in the arts, and 
 chiefly in the form of alloys. 
 
 You are familiar with gold and silver 
 money, silver spoons, copper tea-kettles and 
 coal-scuttles, steel pens, tin saucepans and 
 dish-covers ; but perhaps you have ' not 
 thought of many other metals and their uses. 
 There are at present known about fifty-one 
 distinct metals, which cannot be decomposed. 
 Some of these have been only discovered so 
 lately that we may suppose other unknown 
 
44 METALS. 
 
 ones still to exist; and they are separated 
 from their ores in so many different ways that 
 I cannot describe all very particularly. 
 
 Native gold is procured by simply washing 
 and picking out the glittering particles from 
 the earth or sand amidst which it lies, or the 
 quartz rock in which it lies is picked and 
 blasted, broken up and crushed with hammers 
 and wheels, and mixed with mercury in pans* 
 full of water. The water flows off and leaves 
 the amalgam of mercury and gold. After- 
 wards the mercury is driven off in vapour by 
 heat, and the gold remains pure behind, only 
 containing here and there small, sharp and 
 exceedingly hard crystals of osmium, iridium 
 and rhodium, which are picked out at the 
 mint and sold to make the diamond points for 
 gold pens. 
 
 The amalgamation of silver with mercury 
 in South America is effected by the trampling 
 of horses, but the quicksilver soon destroys 
 their hoofs, and in a very few years they are 
 unfitted for work. Gold and silver are too 
 soft for use as money without an alloy of cop- 
 per ; they are not only used for money and 
 for ornament, but, as ordinary acids do not 
 injure them, they are employed for spoons, 
 
QUICKSILVER. 45 
 
 ladles and other domestic articles. Silver, 
 especially, is common for such purposes, and 
 it was thought that aluminum, or clay metal, 
 which is as white as silver but only half as 
 heavy, would be used for the same purposes; 
 but it rusts too easily, and is Very hard to work, 
 so that it is only used as an alloy. Gold and 
 silver make beautiful colours also, and are 
 therefore used in colouring glass and china- 
 ware. 
 
 Silver combined with nitric acid produces 
 the caustic of the surgeon ; while the addition 
 of sap green, or Indian ink, forms marking- 
 ink : when alcohol is added, fulminating pow- 
 der is the result, an exceedingly dangerous 
 compound, which explodes with a very little 
 heat or friction. This powder is used in 
 making lucifer matches, percussion-caps, Con- 
 greve rockets, and such things. 
 
 A little silver is occasionally found in quick- 
 silver-mines, but mercury seldom lies in silver- 
 mines. It occurs mostly in chalk or clay 
 rocks, sometimes in pure globules, but more 
 commonly as an ore with sulphur, called cin- 
 nabar, from which it is driven off as a vapour 
 by heat. It derives its name of "quick" or 
 living silver from its usual fluid state, the 
 
46 METALS. 
 
 movable globules continually eluding the touch, 
 as if it were alive. It is usually carried either 
 in iron or glass jars, leather bags, or bamboo 
 canes. Pliny mentions that the Greeks ob- 
 tained cinnabar from Almaden, in Spain, 700 
 B.C., and that the same mines in his own 
 time yielded annually seven hundred thousand 
 pounds. Quicksilver is still derived from 
 them, and their present annual product is 
 nearly three millions of pounds : so that during 
 the last three thousand years they must have 
 yielded an immense quantity. 
 
 There are some quicksilver-mines also in 
 Peru and in China. Mercury was discovered 
 at Idria, in Austria, about 1497, in rather a 
 singular manner, which shows the importance 
 of noticing facts occurring in daily life, and 
 thinking over any unusual circumstance. The 
 district at that time abounded in wood, and 
 was chiefly inhabited by coopers. One even- 
 ing a cooper placed a new tub under a drop- 
 ping spring, to try if it would hold water, and 
 the next morning he found it so heavy that he 
 could scarcely move it. At first his super- 
 stition led him to think it was bewitched ; but, 
 perceiving a shining substance at the bottom, 
 he collected and carried it to the town, where 
 
QUICKSILVER. 47 
 
 it was soon ascertained to be valuable mercury. 
 His profits from the sale of his treasure re- 
 sulted in a successful search further for the 
 metal. 
 
 Quicksilver-mines are unhealthy for the 
 work-people, not only from their heated atmo- 
 sphere, but from the danger of imbibing the 
 poisonous mercury itself into the system 
 through any little scratch, or with food. The 
 Austrian mines are used as a place of punish- 
 ment for state criminals. In 1810, some ships 
 were bringing home a cargo of mercury from 
 Cadiz, when some of the bags burst and the 
 contents were spilled. All the copper articles 
 on board speedily became amalgamated: rats, 
 mice, cockroaches, a canary-bird, fowls, dogs, 
 cats, sheep and goats were destroyed, and the 
 whole of the crew were seriously ill : indeed, 
 two of them died. 
 
 Quicksilver is a difficult metal to use in the 
 arts on this account, and, even with great care, 
 our mirror-makers are liable to a disease 
 called " the shaking palsy." It loosens the 
 teeth, causes the hair to fall off, and produces 
 great pain and softness in the bones, which is 
 greatly aggravated by damp weather. As 
 calomel, it is used in medicine, but great cau- 
 
48 METALS. 
 
 tion and medical advice are requisite in taking 
 it. The brilliant red paint called vermilion 
 as produced from mercury. Corrosive sub- 
 limate is another exceedingly dangerous pre- 
 paration from it, used for preventing dry-rot 
 in timber and mildew in sail-cloth. 
 
 Mercury is never seen in a solid state, ex- 
 cept when frozen solid in the coldest arctic 
 regions, when, of course, the philosophical 
 instruments depending upon it are rendered 
 useless. In these regions, the philosophers 
 themselves have, for curiosity sake, shot bul- 
 lets of quicksilver from their muskets. 
 
 "They told me," said Edward, "when I 
 was travelling last summer up the Lehigh 
 Kiver, in Pennsylvania, that they made iron 
 out of stone. What does that mean ?" 
 
 Mr. Goodman then described the iron-manu- 
 facture, and began by saying that iron is 
 never found in a pure state, like gold or copper, 
 but only as ore, of which there are six princi- 
 pal useful varieties, wanting a great deal of 
 preparation before you could make out of them 
 a spade or a needle. The ore, or iron-stone, as 
 it is called, is first roasted, to drive off the 
 water, sulphur and arsenic with which it is 
 often combined ; then smelted in a high stack- 
 
AN IRON-FURNACE. 49 
 
 furnace with coal or charcoal, when the melted 
 iron runs out from the bottom into moulds of 
 sand or clay, where it is allowed to cool. The 
 rough bars of cast iron are called "pigs," 
 because they lie side by side along the casting- 
 floor in the sand, all attached at one end to the 
 great stream of metal down the centre, called 
 the sow, which is broken up and smelted over 
 again, while the pigs are heated and ham- 
 mered into blooms or balls of wrought iron 
 and then rolled into bars and sheets for use. 
 Some of the pig-metal is re-melted and run 
 into moulds of various shapes, to make cast- 
 ings of all kinds, pots and skillets, railings, 
 columns -for buildings, the bed-plates of en- 
 gines, cannon and cannon-balls, car-wheels, 
 and a thousand other things, both great and 
 small. 
 
 An iron-furnace is a grand object. The 
 largest sort are sixty feet in height, built up 
 of solid masonry, like a square tower, with 
 sloping sides, in every one of which is a great 
 archway, and under each are pipes through 
 which hot air is blown through holes into the 
 raging fire within. Sometimes a single fur- 
 nace-stack will have twelve of these nozzles 
 blowing air into it at once. The nozzles, or 
 
 D 5 
 
50 METALS. 
 
 " tuyeres/' as they are called, are surrounded 
 by cool running water, to keep them from 
 melting. The air is heated in furnaces at the 
 top of the stack, and driven forward by power- 
 ful steam-engines and great air-pumps of cast 
 iron. The coal, ore and limestone are car- 
 ried over high bridges from the hill-side to 
 the furnace-stack top, to be thrown in at the 
 "tunnel-head" or mouth of the furnace; or 
 else are hoisted up in movable stages by the 
 weight of water ; or else are drawn up on long 
 inclined planes by steam-engines from the 
 banks of the canal or the platform of the rail- 
 road. Sometimes three, four or five of these 
 great furnace-stacks are built close together 
 in a row, and have one great top for all, on 
 which the hot-air ovens stand, and along 
 which the " stock" of ore, &c. is drawn on 
 wheelbarrows. Tall chimneys rise from this 
 high place still higher into the air, and per- 
 petual flames and noxious gases pour from the 
 tunnel-heads. At night the glare of the fires 
 above, and of the molten metal below, the 
 laborious sighing of the blast-pipes, the clank- 
 ing of the hoisting-apparatus, and the rolling 
 of the trains of cars bringing ore or carrying 
 off the metal, make a scene which when once 
 
COMBINED ORES. 51 
 
 seen can never be forgotten, and is perhaps 
 the best symbol of the energy and productive- 
 ness, the skill and the power, of the Christian 
 civilization of the present day. 
 
 The ores used by furnace-men are very dif- 
 ferent, and are always mixed together, so that 
 their hurtful qualities may neutralize each 
 other and their admirable qualities may be 
 combined in the cast iron which is made from 
 them. Thus, for instance, on the Lehigh 
 River, the heavy black magnetic and zincy 
 ores of the New Jersey veins are mixed with 
 the light, porous brown hematite or "limonite" 
 ores dug from the pits around Allentown. 
 On the Schuylkill and Susquehanna, this 
 brown hematite ore is mixed with the gray 
 magnetic coppery ore of the Cornwall mine 
 near Lebanon. On the North Branch of the 
 Susquehanna, both these varieties are mixed 
 with the blood-red " fossil ore" of the Mon- 
 tour's Ridge, at Danville and Bloomsburg. 
 At the head-waters of the Juniata, this fossil 
 ore, again, is mixed not only with the pipe ore 
 of the interior limestone valleys, but also with 
 the carbonate ores or clay iron-stone of the 
 coal-measures. At Pittsburg, and in Northern 
 Ohio, these carbonate ores are mixed with the 
 
52 METALS. 
 
 magnetic ore which comes in lake boats from 
 Lake Superior and in steamboats from Mis- 
 souri; and both these varieties are mixed, 
 again, with " black band" ore ; and soft out- 
 crop brown hematite ore, found also in the 
 coal-measures. Finally, the mixture is carried 
 still further at some furnaces which stand in 
 the neighbourhood of rolling mills, by adding 
 what is called rolling-mill cinder, which con- 
 tains a large percentage of iron. 
 
 Cast iron was unknown, but casting -in brass 
 was common, in the days of Solomon, when 
 vessels for the temple were "cast in the 
 clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan," 
 (1 Kings vii. 46,) and no doubt suggested the 
 preacher's simile, "If thine enemy hunger, 
 feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink ; for 
 in so doiDg thou shalt heap coals of fire upon 
 his head" (Prov. xxv. 22,) or melt him with 
 thy kindness, repeated also by the Apostle 
 Paul. (Eom. xii. 20.) Perhaps Solomon used 
 to watch the workmen smelting, and then God 
 put the thought into his mind. 
 
 Iron is refined by being strongly blown 
 into while in a melted state. This is called 
 the Kelly process, and is in use in the Western 
 States. When re-melted and blown into, 
 
IRON. 53 
 
 according to Bessemer's process, it becomes 
 excessively hot, and loses all its impurities, 
 but is not so useful as when it has a small 
 percentage of foreign matter left in it, which 
 seems to give it fibre and strength. Small 
 quantities of other metals, such as tungsten, 
 are found to be beneficial also to its strength ; 
 but a small quantity of sulphur left in iron 
 makes it very brittle when it is hot, so that 
 it cannot be worked by the machinist or black- 
 smith ; and small portions of phosphorus or 
 silicon make it very brittle when it is cold. 
 A small quantity of carbon or pure coal is 
 mixed with iron at a slow heat to make steel, 
 which is much harder than iron. Pure 
 iron, however, can be somewhat hardened by 
 plunging it into cold water. The uses of iron 
 have been thus well described: "It can 
 be cast into moulds of any form, drawn into 
 wire of any desired strength or fineness, 
 extended into plates, or beaten in every direc- 
 tion, and can be sharpened, hardened and 
 softened at pleasure. Iron is equally ser- 
 viceable to the arts, sciences, agriculture 
 and war; furnishes the sword, the plough- 
 share and prun ing-hook, the needle and 
 graver, the spring of a watch or a carriage, 
 
 5* 
 
54 METALS. 
 
 chisels, chains, anchors, compasses, cannons 
 and pens. It is a medicine of much virtue, 
 the only metal friendly to the human 
 frame." Indeed, I do not know what we 
 should do without iron, it seems a metal of 
 such every-day importance. Steam-engines, 
 bridges, ships, houses and churches are now 
 made of iron, as well as innumerable articles 
 of domestic use. Swedish iron is generally 
 esteemed the best. 
 
 It is a singular circumstance that the only 
 pure native iron which we are sure has ever 
 been found has come from the sky, in the 
 form of meteorolites, or stones which were 
 wandering in space until they met the earth 
 upon its way. Some of this iron has a mix- 
 ture of nickel with it, and w*hen polished 
 shows a fine grain and shining hue nearly 
 resembling steel, with curious markings called 
 the Widmanstatian figures. The Esquimaux 
 use this meteoric iron for their spears, and, 
 indeed, possess no other metal. How this 
 iron could drop from the skies has never 
 yet been explained, and various theories are 
 proposed, some supposing it to be ejected 
 from volcanoes, others from distant planets, 
 while some imagine it may be produced by 
 
THE LOADSTONE. 55 
 
 some process in the atmosphere. Professor 
 Shephard, at Amherst, in Massachusetts, has 
 the largest collection of these meteorites ever 
 made. 
 
 Plumbago has been considered a carburet 
 of iron ; but repeated analyses have proved 
 that it contains so small a proportion of the 
 metal that it must be looked upon as a sort 
 of anthracite coal with iron occasionally pre- 
 sent. It has never yet been either dissolved 
 by acid or melted by heat, and therefore has 
 not the true characteristics of a metal. 
 
 Loadstone, or magnetic iron ore, is a va- 
 riety found in Norway, Cornwall and Scot- 
 land, China, Bengal, Arabia, Asia Minor and 
 the United States, especially at Lake Supe- 
 rior, in Missouri, Northern New York, in the 
 Highlands of the Hudson and New Jersey, 
 and along the Blue Bidge of Virginia and 
 the Carolinas. It is the richest and most 
 valuable of all the ores of iron. It was known 
 to the ancients, who ascribed medicinal vir- 
 tues to it, using it for the cure of burns and 
 weak eyes. The Chinese seem to have disco- 
 vered its polarity and turned it to use as a com- 
 pass long before the Europeans, and by them it 
 was termed "the sailing stone." The ancient 
 
56 METALS. 
 
 Greeks called it the " Herculean stone, because 
 it commands iron, which subdues every thing 
 else." The loadstone not only attracts pure 
 iron itself, but communicates its magnetic 
 power to pure iron and steel when rubbed 
 upon it : hence the magnetic needles used in 
 the mariner's compass. 
 
 Arctic explorers have observed that the 
 needle dips its north end more and more 
 towards the earth as it is carried into higher 
 and higher latitudes, until at last, at a cer- 
 tain point called the North Magnetic Pole, 
 it stands vertical, and beyond that it points 
 towards the south. The attraction of the 
 surveyor's compass-needle for the masses of 
 iron which are in the earth, renders it almost 
 useless in surveying certain portions of the 
 earth's surface, especially in primary re- 
 gions. It is used, however, for discovering 
 the existence and locality of veins of iron-ore. 
 The loadstone enables those who understand 
 its use to astonish the ignorant by many 
 amusing feats, which used to pass for magical 
 wonders, such as " the enchanted swan, the 
 mysterious watch," &c., by which a waxen 
 bird appears to obey its master, or a watch to 
 stop or go on at the command of its owner. 
 
COPPER. 57 
 
 Among your toys you used to have some 
 fishes that would have come to a magnetic 
 hook. 
 
 Copper is generally found in brilliant ores, 
 some of which are called Peacock copper. 
 Copper pyrites look so glittering and attract- 
 ive as to be called " fool's gold/' because 
 it has beguiled the inexperienced into fancy- 
 ing that a mine of that precious metal must 
 exist in its neighbourhood. Copper is almost 
 as useful as iron, not only in furnishing 
 boilers, kettles and wire, but for sheathing 
 the bottoms of ships, to protect them from 
 the action of water and the attacks of sea- 
 worms : it is also used to furnish green and 
 blue colours to the printer. It combines 
 readily with some other metals, with zinc, 
 forming brass and pinchbeck ; with tin, 
 in different proportions, forming bell-metal 
 of varied sound, and also bronze. With tin 
 and silver it makes a speculum metal, ca- 
 pable of receiving the highest polish, and 
 used as mirrors for large telescopes ; and, 
 with tin and nickel, it forms German silver 
 and other compounds of white metal for 
 spoons, forks, teapots and other articles of 
 domestic use. The oxide or rust of copper, 
 
58 METALS. 
 
 however, is highly poisonous : therefore the 
 old-fashioned custom of boiling a penny with 
 greens, pickles and preserves, is dangerous. 
 A copper-mine was discovered in Wicklow 
 by a stream of blue water flowing from it, 
 of so injurious a quality as to destroy all 
 the fish in the river Arklow; and a work- 
 man having left an iron shovel in this stream 
 for a few days found it encrusted with 
 copper, the copper thus obtained being of 
 a purer quality than that produced by 
 smelting, and the process a much less trou- 
 blesome one. 
 
 The largest known copper-mines are in 
 Sweden, one of which is twelve hundred feet 
 deep, and its mouth so extensive, from having 
 once or twice fallen in, that the visitor is a 
 full hour reaching the bottom. Fires have 
 broken out in it, and many passages are filled 
 up to prevent their spreading; but the hot 
 and sulphurous vapours are still excessively 
 oppressive. This mine was anciently used as 
 a State prison, in which criminals, slaves and 
 prisoners of war toiled during their miserable 
 lives ; and here, too, Gustavus Vasa, disguised 
 as a peasant, worked for his daily bread during 
 a long concealment, after having been robbed 
 
MUNDIC. 59 
 
 by his guide ; and it was well, perhaps, that 
 he experienced some of the sufferings of his 
 state prisoners. Much of our copper-ore 
 comes from Chili, in South America, and a 
 good deal from Eastern Tennessee ; but the 
 richest mines in this country are those of 
 Keweenaw Point, on Lake Superior. Two 
 millions of dollars' worth of copper-ore was 
 sent from that region in 1859. 
 
 The famous malachite is an ore of copper 
 found in the copper-mines of Russia, Norway, 
 Wales, England and the Shetland Isles. Its 
 beautiful colour, and the soft lustre which 
 exhibits all its streaks, render it a pretty 
 material for ornaments. 
 
 Mundic is another ore of copper, most 
 abundant in Cornwall, where it was long 
 considered of no use except to nourish the 
 copper, a curious miner's notion, which of 
 course had no foundation. You have some 
 cubes of mundic there ; and the grain seems 
 to be different on every side, so that if you 
 were to cut through the cube you would 
 cross the grain on its opposite side. The 
 reason of this has never been explained, but 
 it is one of its peculiarities. 
 
 " Was my lump of lead just as it came out 
 
60 METALS. 
 
 of the mine, father?" asked Edward, looking 
 ruefully at his workmanship. 
 
 " No," said Mr. Goodman ; for lead also is 
 almost always found as an ore, commonly 
 mixed with sulphur; but there are fourteen 
 or fifteen varieties occurring commonly in 
 limestone. The most common and productive 
 is galena, or sulphuret of lead. The carbon- 
 ate of lead, a heavy white clay, is also greatly 
 valued as an ore, and usually accompanies 
 the sulphuret. The ores of zinc are almost 
 always found in company with these ores of 
 lead, especially in the limestone fissures of 
 Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri. The ore is 
 roasted and smelted in small open furnaces. 
 Small cubes of pure lead are occasionally seen 
 among crystals of lime in the Derbyshire 
 mines. It is a soft metal, and easily spread 
 into sheets for roofing, flooring, or for cis- 
 terns. River and spring water may be stored 
 in these safely; but pure distilled water soon 
 corrodes the lead, and dissolves sufficiently to 
 render the water unwholesome. 
 
 Bullets and shot are made of lead, but it is 
 mixed with arsenic to make it hard enough. 
 Joined with tin, it forms pewter and solder- 
 ing metal. With antimony and. tin, it makes 
 
LEAD PIPE. 61 
 
 type and stereotype metal. Litharge, red 
 lead, white lead and sugar of lead are all 
 oxides, or rusts, of lead, employed as paints, or 
 for making coloured glass, or for glazing pot- 
 tery and enamelled vases. Lead pipe is now 
 made by passing half-melted lead through a 
 hole in the bottom of a reservoir, in which is 
 a plug of iron of the size of the pipe-bore. 
 The pipe as it forms is wound upon an im- 
 mense drum, and afterwards cut into required 
 lengths. 
 
 It is a pretty experiment to hang a small 
 lump of zinc in a bottle, and then dissolve 
 sugar of lead in water for making zinc trees. 
 Little branches speedily show themselves all 
 over the lump of zinc hung in the solution. 
 Lecturers on chemistry often make this experi- 
 ment, to prove the chemical affinity the zinc has 
 for the lead ; for those little branches are really 
 the lead attracted from the water by the 
 zinc, and thus deposited, perhaps in some 
 degree explaining how metals are accumulated 
 in veins in company. Interesting changes are 
 remarked upon coins that have been long 
 buried in the earth, and in the metal utensils 
 discovered in Assyria. 
 
 There are no true mines of zinc, but it is 
 
 6 
 
62 METALS. 
 
 found in two ores, calamine and zinc-blende, 
 in England, Germany, China and the United 
 States. It requires all the processes of roast- 
 ing, washing and smelting, and then rises as 
 vapour to the top of large furnaces like glass- 
 houses, and is conducted by tubes passing 
 through water in small globules, which are 
 afterwards melted together and cast into 
 ingots for sale. It is, as you may suppose, 
 a light metal, but, notwithstanding all this 
 preparation, it is comparatively cheap, so as to 
 permit its use for chimney-pots, water-spouts, 
 roofing and flooring.' It is quickly affected 
 by acids, and is, therefore, not suited for use 
 in the kitchen or dairy. Zinc plates are used 
 for the transfer of printing, under the name 
 of zincography. Joined with copper, zinc 
 forms brass, as I mentioned before ; and when 
 plunged into sulphuric acid it is the powerful 
 generator of electricity in the Voltaic pile 
 battery. Zinc forms the other ingredient of 
 the celebrated Franklinite iron-ore of New 
 Jersey, and, by clogging the furnace-stacks 
 and the burden of ore and coal, has proved a 
 formidable obstacle to the use of that valuable 
 ore in the iron-manufacture. And yet a small 
 
TIN. 63 
 
 mixture of zinc in iron adds greatly to the 
 toughness and strength of the latter. 
 
 Tin was one of the metals known to the 
 ancients. You have some pretty specimens 
 of tin-ore here, and minute grains of it. are 
 found in granite. It is mentioned by Moses 
 (Num. xxxi. 22) among the six metals found 
 in the spoils of the Midianites, which were 
 to be purified from heathen idolatry by fire. 
 'As these Midianites were " merchantmen" 
 trading with "pieces of silver" in Joseph's 
 time, they doubtless traded also with " the 
 strong city of Tyre" (Josh. xix. 28) of that 
 period ; and it is known that British tin was 
 brought to Phoenicia, of which Tyre was one 
 of the principal cities, in very early times. ' 
 
 Tin is by no means universally diffused, 
 and in fact is a very rare metal. A small 
 vein of it was discovered in the White Moun- 
 tains of New Hampshire ; but it has never 
 been wrought. A valuable vein of tin-ore is 
 reported as lately discovered on the western 
 borders of Utah. There is a little tin-ore in 
 Chili, Mexico and the East Indies, but it is 
 abundant in Cornwall and Devonshire, Eng- 
 land, in two sorts of ore only, though occa- 
 sionally it appears quite pure in small crys- 
 
64 METALS. 
 
 tals. Indeed, block- tin is a collection of 
 minute crystals intercepting one another in 
 every possible direction, so as to leave tiny 
 spaces between. Hence it is a light metal, 
 and produces a peculiar crackling noise in 
 bending, which the French call "le cri de 
 l'etain," or " the cry of tin." Attention to 
 the shape and direction of the crystals greatly 
 assists the polishing of metals. Tin is broken 
 into small pieces and melted over and over 
 again, till it looks as bright as silver, and is 
 then cooled, and ladled gradually into moulds, 
 because, if quickly poured into them while 
 hot, the tin becomes brittle. It is too soft 
 and too valuable to be used alone, but is con- 
 stantly employed for lining and coating iron 
 utensils. It will bear beating into leaves 
 only the thousandth part of an inch thick, 
 and therefore, as tin-foil or tin-leaf, is much 
 used for the lining of tea-caddies and the 
 packing of articles that must be kept dry. 
 Mixed with lead, tin forms pewter. It is 
 also used with mercury for silvering the back 
 of mirrors and looking-glasses, and, when dis- 
 solved in muriatic acid, it furnishes colours 
 for dyers and calico-printers. 
 
 Edward now showed his father a piece of 
 
PLATINA. 65 
 
 ore labelled "needles of antimony," and asked 
 if that were the same mineral used for anti- 
 monial wine. Mr. Goodman told him that 
 oxide of antimony was used for that purpose. 
 The metal itself is found nearly pure in 
 veins amidst the mountains of Dauphins' and 
 Sweden, as well as the Hartz Mountains. It 
 is, as may be seen from that specimen, ex- 
 tremely brittle and easily corroded. It is 
 very useful in the arts for the white metal 
 often used instead of silver for music-plates. 
 Its sulphuret forms the black powder with 
 which the ladies of ancient times used to stain 
 their eyebrows and eyelids. Oxide of anti- 
 mony gives colour to the artificial imitations 
 of beryls, topazes and yellow diamonds. .Anti- 
 mony and bismuth usually go together, but 
 their power of conducting heat is so different 
 that when two pieces are soldered together 
 and a stream of galvanism is sent through 
 them in one direction, a drop of water laid in 
 the crease between them will boil ; but when 
 the current is reversed the drop of water will 
 freeze. 
 
 Platina must be added to this list of metals. 
 The term is a diminutive of "plata," the 
 Spanish for silver. It is so scarce as to be 
 
 E 6* 
 
66 METALS. 
 
 almost as costly as gold, and is really nearly 
 as valuable, as it is heavier and more difficult 
 to melt, yet ntill more ductile and flexible. It 
 is also very malleable, that is, it can, when 
 hot, be easily beaten out and welded to iron 
 and steel. Neither air, water nor any simple 
 acids injure it, though it can be converted 
 into a chloride by nitro-muriatic acid. It is, 
 therefore, exceedingly useful to the chemist 
 for his crucibles, and is sometimes employed 
 for the mirrors of reflecting telescopes. There 
 are no platina-mines. It is generally found 
 combined with palladium, rhodium, titanium, 
 gold, iron and other metals, but in very small, 
 heavy grains, seldom larger than a pea or 
 a nut. 
 
 The last-named substances are some of the 
 new metals which have been discovered 
 during the past century, but not in sufficient 
 quantities to make them very available for 
 use. Cobalt, manganese, arsenic and nickel 
 are the principal of these ; though manganese 
 was known in Pliny's time, being then deemed 
 an earth. It is much used by potters and 
 glass-makers for colouring, and yields brown 
 to the calico-printer. The ore of manganese, 
 called black wad, is remarkable for its spon- 
 
BISMUTH. 67 
 
 taneous combustion with oil. It is used also 
 for obtaining chlorine for bleaching-purposes. 
 
 Cobalt and its oxide, smalt, give a beautiful 
 blue tint to glass, china-ware and paper. Nickel 
 is susceptible of magnetism, and is therefore 
 sometimes used for the mariner's compass. 
 
 Arsenic is employed for hardening candles, 
 making flint-glass, and dyes of green, red, and 
 yellow, as well as for tinting fireworks. It is 
 much used in medicine, and yet is so deadly 
 a poison that it destroys human and animal 
 life very rapidly. Even its fumes are inju- 
 rious to health. 
 
 Bismuth is a pretty-looking metal, not 
 very common, and of little use, as it melts 
 even before it is red-hot. This, however, 
 adapts it for a soft, soldering material. Sir 
 Isaac Newton composed a fusible metal con- 
 sisting of eight parts of bismuth, five of tin 
 and three of lead, which, though hard enough 
 to polish when cold, ,would melt so readily 
 in hot fluid that spoons made of it will dis- 
 appear in stirring a cup of tea, to the no 
 small dismay of an ignorant person. 
 
 These are n'ot all the new metals. The 
 following is a list of the whole; though of 
 many of them little else is known than the 
 
68 
 
 METALS. 
 
 name, suggested by the odour, colour, or 
 some such circumstance; and they are not 
 yet much used either in art or medicine. 
 
 1. Gold. 
 
 2. Silver. 
 
 3. Copper. 
 
 4. Iron. 
 
 5. Tin. 
 
 6. Lead. 
 
 7. Mercury, or Quicksilver. 
 
 8. Zinc. 
 
 9. Antimony, 
 
 10. Bismuth. 
 
 11. Cobalt. 
 
 12. Nickel. 
 
 13. Manganese. 
 
 14. Arsenic. 
 
 15. Platinum. 
 
 16. Palladium. 
 
 17. Rhodium. 
 
 18. Osmium, so called from 
 
 osme, odour. 
 
 19. Iridium, from its iris 
 
 or rainbow hue. 
 
 20. Tungsten. 
 
 21. Tellurium, from tellus, 
 
 22. Molybdenum, from 
 
 molybdos, lead. 
 
 23. Uranium. 
 
 24. Titanium. 
 
 25. Columbium. 
 
 26. Cerium. 
 
 27. Cadmium. 
 
 28. Chromium. 
 
 29. Vanadium. 
 
 30. Zirconium. 
 
 31. Sodium. 
 
 32. Potassium. 
 
 33. Calcium. 
 
 34. Silicon. 
 
 35. Aluminum. 
 
 36. Silenium. 
 
 37. Lithium. 
 
 38. Barium. 
 
 39. Strontium. 
 
 40. Magnesium. 
 
 41. Yttrium. 
 
 42. Glucinum. 
 
 t 
 
 43. Thorinium.* J 
 
 the earth. 
 
 The metals bracketed together are never 
 
 * Some others have been named recently, but have 
 scarcely been sufficiently proved to be classed with the 
 above. 
 
ALCHEMY. 69 
 
 found separate in nature, and are of little use 
 by themselves; but their oxides form the 
 substances known as earths and alkalies, clay, 
 sand, soda, potash, lime, magnesia, &c. At 
 some other time these may be considered by 
 themselves; but they come in here because 
 they really have " a metallic basis," that is, 
 their simplest and purest form is that of 
 metals. 
 
 Edward asked his father if he thought it 
 possible to change metals into gold, as the old 
 alchemists fancied. 
 
 He replied that there is no evidence that it 
 is possible. The history of the few imagined 
 successes is so doubtful, and the circumstances 
 described are so improbable, that we must think 
 the alchemists were deceived, by the weight or 
 colour, as to the value of the compounds they 
 produced. Moreover, as the Scriptures say, 
 '" Thou canst not make one hair white or 
 black," it is not likely that the greater change 
 of lead to gold should be within human 
 power. 
 
 In reply to this, Mr. Goodman remarked that 
 it is very difficult to form a just opinion of their 
 character or views. It is strange that they 
 could have been willing to lend themselves to 
 
70 METALS. 
 
 the impostures to which they certainly gave 
 currency. Many of them were men of great 
 learning and of irreproachable character. Roger 
 Bacon (commonly called Friar Bacon, being 
 an English monk of the order of the Francis- 
 cans, born in the year 1214,) exposed the 
 absurdity of magic, necromancy and charms, 
 yet professed his belief in alchemy. 
 
 Doubtless many persons were deceived and 
 deluded by plausible pretenders, and others 
 were induced to embrace and propagate the 
 belief from sordid and corrupt motives. If 
 they had access to the sacred writings, they 
 certainly did not take heed to them, or they 
 would have learned to distrust the principles 
 of their (so-called) science. They could not 
 fail to notice how the lead, iron and silver, 
 which the alchemists were most anxious to 
 transmute into gold, are continually mentioned 
 as " abiding the fire," as being only " tried/' 
 " purified," by its action, but always retaining 
 their own characteristics. Indeed, these pro- 
 perties rendered metals a frequent type of God's 
 dealings with his servants. " I will refine them 
 as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried," 
 says God by his prophet Zechariah. (xiii. 9.) 
 "When he hath tried me," says Job, (xxiii. 
 
SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 71 
 
 10,) " I shall come forth as gold." " He shall 
 sit as a refiner and purifier of silver," (Mai. 
 iii. 3;) an image which is peculiarly apt, as 
 the silver is perfected only when the refiner 
 can see his own image reflected in it, remind- 
 ing us of the purpose of all affliction to assimi- 
 late our characters to that of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, the Great Eefiner. (Ezek. xxii. 19, 22.) 
 Then, again, iron and brass denote obstinacy 
 on the part of man. "Thou art obstinate," 
 says Isaiah, (xlyiii. 4,) " thy neck is an iron 
 sinew, and thy brow brass," and needed the 
 threatened punishment, to be broken by a rod 
 of iron. The Apostle Paul stigmatizes pro- 
 fession without practice as being but " as 
 sounding brass." (1 Cor. xiii. 1.) God's ene- 
 mies were said to sink " as lead in the mighty 
 waters," (Exod. xv. 10,) or to be consumed in 
 the fire, "cast away like refuse silver," (Jer. 
 vi. 29, 30,) because the Lord had rejected 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Goodman concluded his remarks on 
 metals by urging his children to remember 
 these illustrations of sin and of duty, and 
 especially the warning given against covetous- 
 ness; for the Bible says that "he that loveth 
 silver shall not be satisfied with silver." (Ec- 
 
72 METALS. 
 
 cles. v. 10.) The apostle adds, Your silver 
 and gold, ye rich men, is corrupted ; the rust 
 of them if suffered to lie by useless shall 
 be a witness against you. Ye have heaped 
 up treasure for the last day, (James v. 3,) 
 when an account of your property will be re- 
 quired. Such riches are for the earth only, 
 and must be relinquished at the threshold of 
 eternity. Those only who are rich in faith in 
 our Saviour Jesus Christ will carry their 
 wealth beyond the grave. May you, my 
 children, be well furnished with the only true 
 riches ! 
 
SPHENOPHYLLUM TRANSVERSE SECTION OF STIGMARIA FICOTDES ; net. 
 
 SCHLOTHEIMI ; M. Adolphc Brongniart. 
 
 nat. size. This specimen shows that the cylinder (a in Lign. 36) is 
 
 formed of bundles of vascular tissue, disposed in rays. 
 
 FOSSIL FRUITS, OR SEED- 
 VESSELS; nat. 
 
 FIG. 2 CARPOLITHES BCCKI.AN- 
 DII. Coralline Oolite, 
 Malt on. 
 
 3. TRIOONOCARPITM OLIVER- 
 FORME. Snibstone Col- 
 liery. 
 L1= See page 91. 
 
 LEPIDOSTROBT, THE FRUIT OF LEPIDOPEN- 
 
 DRA ; nat. 
 tCoalbrook Dale. 
 
 Fio. 2. The upper part of a cone, display- 
 ing the imbiicated surface. 
 3. A young specimen attached to the 
 extremity of a branch. 
 
 ODD. T>. 72. 
 
TREASURES. 73 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 As summer advanced, the grotto became a 
 favourite retreat with the whole family. Alice 
 enjoyed counting up the names of the various 
 contributions to its beauty as memorials of 
 friendship, while Edward found in them 
 ample food for his philosophical research, Mr. 
 Goodman being the referee and instructor, 
 whenever he could spare time for the pur- 
 pose. 
 
 / Among the treasures thus gathered were 
 some remarkable pieces of coal and coke, 
 which Edward had obtained from various 
 colliers ; some sulphurs his father had brought 
 from abroad; bitumen from an Egyptian 
 mummy; and one beautiful specimen of 
 amber, enclosing an insect and part of a de- 
 cayed leaf. 
 
 The young people were admiring these one 
 morning, when Mr. Goodman joined them, and, 
 
74 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 pointing out the coal and bitumen, said that 
 they might both be classed with amber in. 
 some respects. 
 
 " Indeed, father ?" exclaimed Alice. " They 
 seem very dissimilar. " 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that they are all com- 
 bustibles, and have very similar origin; for it 
 is now fully ascertained that they are the 
 remains of ancient vegetation, coal being the 
 moss, ferns and leaves, amber the gum, and 
 bitumen the turpentine, sap and juices of 
 whole forests, which, by the arrangements of 
 God's wisdom, have been buried under ground, 
 where they have gradually been changed into 
 these useful minerals. Asphaltum, petroleum, 
 naphtha, and some other compounds of hydro- 
 gen and carbon may be considered as varieties 
 of coal, though they are not always found 
 together, for coal often occurs without bitumen 
 or amber, but bitumen and amber are never 
 found excepting in the neighbourhood of coal- 
 formations. 
 
 Amber has been found from time imme- 
 morial on the sea-shore in Prussia, thrown up 
 by the waves ; but there are mines of it near 
 Dantzic about one hundred feet deep, where 
 there is a thick stratum of half-decomposed 
 
AMBER. 75 
 
 trees, yielding bitumen and amber, which 
 sometimes hangs in stalactites from the 
 branches. When burnt in the open air, it 
 gives out a thick, pungent, fragrant smoke, 
 leaving a light-shining black coke as its re- 
 sidue. When distilled, it yields succinic acid, 
 so called from the Latin name of amber, sue- 
 cinum; and the ash or residue is used for 
 making fine black varnish. 
 
 Alice said she should never have supposed 
 the pretty transparent amber could make 
 coal, it looked so very different. 
 
 Mr. Goodman remarked that the difference, 
 after all, was great. It will bear a brilliant 
 polish for beads and boxes. It may be boiled 
 in water without softening or altering its ap- 
 pearance ; but, when melted by heat, it yields 
 oil, which is at first colourless, but, if exposed 
 to light or to much greater heat, it becomes 
 brown, and afterward a thick, black mass, 
 almost like bitumen. It can be dissolved in 
 sulphuric acid and some powerful oils, but, 
 when once melted, cannot be restored to its 
 natural transparency. It is of various colours, 
 but most commonly either white or yellow, 
 and is used very much for oil-varnishes. It 
 was known to the ancient Arabs, Greeks and 
 
76 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 Romans ; indeed, the Arabs called it ambra. 
 All these nations used it as a medicine, and 
 the Eomans valued it as a gem, importing it 
 largely for ornamental purposes. It was sup- 
 posed to have magical virtues, and was hung 
 about the necks of children to preserve them 
 from sickness, a superstition which still con- 
 tinues in force in some countries. Thales, of 
 Miletus, who lived six hundred years before 
 Christ, noticed its electric property of attract- 
 ing light bodies, when heated by rubbing; 
 and the prophet Ezekiel, (i. 4; viii. 2,) who 
 lived about the same time, mentions it as a 
 substance familiar to the Jews in Chaldea. 
 Most animals seem fond of amber, and eat it 
 when they find it, without injurious effects. 
 
 Jet, also, is a sort of coal, but very hard 
 and used for ornament : it is known as pitch- 
 coal, and in Prussia it is called black amber. 
 It takes its name from the river Gaya, in Asia 
 Minor, where it was first noticed; it will bear 
 a brilliant polish, and is cut into rosaries, 
 boxes, brooches, inkstands, &c. The Isles of 
 Skye and Feroe yield it, and large quantities 
 are found in Mexico and other volcanic coun- 
 tries. 
 
 "What is bitumen, father?" asked Edward. 
 
BITUMEN. 
 
 77 
 
 " Our specimen looks like a lump of very dry 
 old resin." 
 
 Mr. Goodman, taking up the specimen, re- 
 plied that bitumen is rather the general name 
 for several sorts of mineral oil, pitch, mineral 
 hatchetine, tallow and caoutchouc, which are 
 found in the earth, seeming to have been origin- 
 ally vegetable juices, and are now in various 
 stages of mineralization. The remains of ancient 
 fish in some formations such as the Old Red 
 Sandstone are converted into animal bitumen ; 
 and many rocks which give a fetid odour 
 when broken are supposed to owe this pro- 
 perty to animal bitumen from the decom- 
 position of creatures now no longer existing. 
 
 Naphtha, petroleum and Barbadoes tar are 
 highly inflammable mineral liquids, found 
 issuing from the earth or dropping from the 
 rocks in some parts of Europe and Asia. 
 Naphtha is often collected into wells, and, 
 when lighted, will burn for a long time. It 
 is frequently used for lamps, and in Italy 
 whole cities are lighted by it. Its odour is 
 strong, but not unpleasant, and its power of 
 dissolving oils and resins renders it very use- 
 ful in the arts, especially in dissolving caout- 
 chouc for water-proof clothing. 
 7* 
 
78 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 Petroleum is found in small quantities in 
 England/ but very abundantly in the East 
 and West Indies. Near the town of Rainan- 
 ghong, in the Birman Empire, there are no 
 less than five hundred and twenty wells into 
 which petroleum flows from adjacent coal- 
 beds. No water ever penetrates into these 
 wells ; but more than four hundred thousand 
 hogsheads of petroleum are annually procured, 
 which is extensively used for lamps, and, when 
 mixed with earth, furnishes an important sup- 
 ply of fuel. With us, in America, it is known 
 as Seneca-oil, from the town of Seneca, in the 
 State of New York, where it was first ob- 
 tained. But it is abundant in many places in 
 the coal-regions, especially around their edges, 
 as on Oil Creek, in Northwestern Pennsylvania. 
 At one time, a large quantity of it took fire on 
 the surface of a small river in Ohio, and for 
 half a mile the stream was one sheet of 
 flame. It ascends with the salt water from 
 the salt-borings, and is not only sold for 
 burning-fluid and machine-oil, but is used for 
 boiling the salt water, making salt, and even 
 for lighting houses and villages with gas. 
 
 There are so many natural gas-vents in 
 India, Persia, China and various parts of the 
 
ASPHALTE. 79 
 
 world, some of which have been burning for 
 centuries, that it is astonishing gas was not 
 sooner turned to account in the arts. The 
 salt-works of Thsee Lieon Teing, indeed, were 
 long heated and lighted by these fiery foun- 
 tains, which rose sometimes twenty or thirty 
 feet high. Bamboo pipes carried the gas from 
 the springs wherever needed, tubes of pipe- 
 clay being fixed at the burning points. At 
 these works, a single gas-well heats more than 
 three hundred kettles; and the fire thus 
 kindled is said to be so exceedingly brisk that 
 the cauldrons are useless in a few months. 
 Three columns of flame carry off the super- 
 fluous gas. The village of Fredonia, in the 
 State of New York, is lighted in a similar 
 manner from natural gas. In both these 
 cases the gas is ascertained to ascend from 
 beds of bituminous coal. 
 
 Asphalte is so similar to petroleum as to be 
 apparently the same thing in a more solid 
 form. It occurs abundantly on the shores of 
 the Dead Sea, which was anciently called 
 Lacus Asphaltites in consequence. It was 
 largely employed by the ancients in building. 
 All writers agree that the bricks in the walls 
 of Babylon were cemented with hot asphalte, 
 
80 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 which rendered them very solid. The Egyp- 
 tians used it in embalming the dead. The 
 lump of bitumen you have here was taken 
 from the head of a mummy. 
 
 Much of the asphalte used in England is 
 furnished by the Pitch Lake of Trinidad, 
 which is three miles in circumference, of un- 
 known thickness, and sometimes hard enough 
 for men and cattle to walk upon it. Melted 
 and mixed with sand, gravel or iron-slag, it 
 forms a cheap and durable pavement; but 
 very hot weather softens it so that it cannot 
 very well be used for streets. There is a sort 
 of black or brown limestone found near Bris- 
 tol, and in Galway and Dalmatia, so full of 
 bitumen that it is soft enough to be cut like 
 soap. In Dalmatia this stone is used for 
 building, and, when the walls are reared, fire 
 is applied to them, and they burn white. 
 
 Coal-tar is a product of the distillation of 
 gas-coal in the retorts of gas-houses. The re- 
 siduum is coke, which is also produced in 
 stacks and ovens for the purpose of being 
 used in iron-furnaces, because the uncoked 
 fat coal cakes and stops the draught. Coke 
 weighs only one-half as much as the coal out 
 of which it is made. It is a porous, lava-like, 
 
MINERAL TALLOW. 81 
 
 shining, ringing, brittle substance, somewhat 
 resembling pumice-stone, but making an in- 
 tense heat when burned. 
 
 Mineral tallow is scarcely soft enough to 
 be made into candles, though it looks white 
 and feels greasy. That and elastic bitumen, 
 or mineral caoutchouc, are both varieties of 
 bitumen, greatly resembling the substances 
 whose names they bear. There is also a ma- 
 terial found in the iron-mines of Merthyr- 
 Tydvil, in South Wales, of a soft, whitish or 
 greenish hue, looking something like sperma- 
 ceti, or bees '-wax, from which oil can be dis- 
 tilled at a low heat, leaving behind a coaly 
 matter. It is wonderful that from so black 
 a substance as cannel-coal and carbonaceous 
 shale there is obtained, by simple distillation, 
 a pure, white brilliant substance called paraf- 
 fine, much used now for candles in the place 
 of spermaceti, especially when hardened with 
 a little arsenic. 
 
 Mellite, or honey-stone, so named from its 
 colour and consistency, is another mineral, oc- 
 curring at Thuringia, in Saxony, and in Swit- 
 zerland, on bituminous wood and earthy coal, 
 which has so many similar characteristics as 
 to place it among combustible substances. In 
 
 F 
 
82 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 the blue clay of which Highgate Hill, in Eng- 
 land, consists, small lumps of fossil gum copal 
 are often found, and so like the copal gum of 
 American trees now growing that it is called 
 Highgate resin; and there can be no doubt, 
 from its mode of burning, that it is of vege- 
 table origin. 
 
 Edward here expressed wonder as to what 
 different vegetables would come to, if they 
 were left to themselves. 
 
 Mr. Goodman answered that the peat moss 
 of Ireland would help to satisfy this curiosity, 
 as it can be found in all stages between its 
 early green growth and the black substance 
 used for fuel. Peat is not known to occur in 
 tropical regions, where vegetation decays too 
 rapidly for its production. Bog-wood carries 
 us another step on towards the coal-measures, 
 its condition is so evidently a medium between 
 vegetable wood and mineral coal. 
 
 " Uncle Joe, "said Alice, "when he came back 
 from Ireland, brought some bog-wood with him; 
 but it was not hard enough for the wall of our 
 grotto : so Edward put it into the table-drawer 
 with the crumbling things." So saying, she 
 produced two or three varieties. 
 
 But bog-wood, said her father, exhibits 
 
BOG-WOOD. 83 
 
 various degrees of hardness as well as of black- 
 ness. Some specimens will bear carving into 
 brooches and boxes, and are as black as coal ; 
 but all have the lightness of wood, and are 
 liable to split in the same manner. It seems 
 to have been produced by the slow burning 
 action of the oxygen of the water in the bog 
 where it is found, a process well known to 
 chemists, and called eremacausis. The Ca- 
 tholic inhabitants of Ireland make fragrant 
 rosaries of bog-wood, and, when they are 
 blessed by the Pope, they are highly prized 
 by their superstitious owners, and are sent 
 to all parts of the world as the most valuable 
 presents. 
 
 Edward said that it would be interesting to 
 find coal-mines where the coals did not seem 
 yet completely formed. 
 
 Mr. Goodman said, laughingly, that they 
 could hardly be called coal-mines till their 
 contents were fully formed ; but, in fact, the 
 later coal-formations, called tertiary, exhibited 
 the coal in the state of lignite, which is really 
 a half-way condition between modern wood 
 and the compacted coal of the secondary and 
 primary formations. Moreover, ancient trees 
 are seen in the rocks; and on the west coast 
 
84 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 of France, near Morlaix and Quimper, there 
 are whole modern forests now standing under 
 water, so that their condition can be easily 
 examined and any changes watched. In a 
 report* from these districts, dated 1856, on 
 this very subject, the writer, . Monsieur Du- 
 ^rocher, stated that between Redon and Renai, 
 places which can readily be found on the 
 map, a marsh still exists, which is covered 
 with water at high tides, but at low water 
 the peasants procure large quantities of 
 wood from it for their fires. At St. Nazaire, 
 at the mouth of the river Loire, trunks of 
 trees are still visible, in serried ranks; a re- 
 markable fact, for the whole of that coast is 
 now for the most part destitute of trees. M. 
 Durocher considers that they were over- 
 whelmed within a comparatively recent period 
 by the encroachments of the sea. Documents 
 exist proving that the destruction of the 
 forests on the St. Malo coast took place be- 
 tween the eighth and twelfth centuries. That 
 of Dol, near Mount St. Michael, is principally 
 composed of oaks, which have become quite 
 black and extremely hard. The neighbour- 
 
 * See "Athenaeum," Dec. 27, 1856. 
 
FOSSIL TEEES. 85 
 
 ing peasants have long used this wood for 
 carving, as it is capable of receiving a very 
 high polish. They call it " coeron," a word 
 derived from the Celtic language. In Den- 
 mark there are deep wells, sunk through suc- 
 cessive layers of rocks and submerged peat- 
 bogs, with overthrown trunks of trees in such 
 a state of preservation that they are quarried 
 out and used for building and burning. What 
 is most remarkable is the fact that each layer 
 or bed of peat contains trunks of trees of 
 a different kind, one having been an oak 
 forest, another a beech, another a pine, and 
 so on. Mr. Lesquereux, who studied all the 
 bogs of Europe, has shown that the American 
 coal-beds were made from such Great Dismal 
 Swamps as now exist along the coasts of Vir- 
 ginia and the Carolinas. And Mr. Lyell and 
 Mr. Dawson have described the ancient forests 
 standing in the rocks of Nova Scotia, with 
 their roots buried in the ancient coal-beds of 
 that country. Similar forests are seen in all 
 the coal-regions of the world. 
 
 In Parkfield Colliery, near Wolverhampton, 
 there was a fossil forest so thickly studded 
 that seventy-three stumps of trees were counted 
 on a quarter of an acre. Here is a plan of the 
 
86 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 Ground-plan of a fossil forest, Parkfield Colliery, near Wolverhampton, 
 showing the position of 73 trees in a quarter of an acre. 
 
 spot. All the trees have been removed to 
 different geological collections, and may be 
 examined by the curious student of nature. 
 This fossil forest was discovered where the 
 loose rubbish is seen lying in the foreground 
 of the following sketch, which shows what 
 is rarely to be met with now in England; 
 that is, coal and ironstone beds lying so near 
 the surface of the ground as to be excavated 
 in the open light of day, in the same way as a 
 railway-cutting ; for in that country most of 
 the beds lie so deep under ground that wells 
 have to be sunk to reach them, sometimes 
 
FOSSIL FOREST. 87 
 
 hundreds of yards in depth, at the mouths of 
 which steam-engines, pumps for raising water, 
 fans for blowing down air into the galleries, 
 and machinery for hoisting the baskets or car- 
 loads of coal to the surface, are placed at 
 great expense. Sliding stages are also made 
 to ascend and descend the sides of these well- 
 shafts, on which the miners go up or down 
 with speed and safety, instead of climbing 
 dangerous, long, steep ladders, or being let up 
 and down in baskets at the end of ropes, as in 
 old times. Mining is much safer and cheaper 
 now than it used to be. 
 
 The lowest bed of coal adjoining the little 
 tram-road in the sketch above is eleven feet 
 thick, and is known as the bottom-coal. Al- 
 though here only about seven or eight yards 
 below the surface, at another part of the col- 
 liery this bed is one hundred and fifty yards 
 deep. Above the coal on the left-hand side, 
 shown by the streaky lines, lies the white clay 
 ironstone, in beds varying from two to six 
 inches in thickness, and at this point eleven 
 or twelve in number. The measures, lying all 
 so regularly on the left-hand side of the sketch, 
 are brought to a sudden termination by the 
 slip or fault shown in the middle, the whole 
 
88 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 being thus thrown down twenty or thirty 
 yards. 
 
 Such an open cut, but on a much grander 
 scale, was one of the first coal-mines opened 
 in America, the Summit Mine, at Mauch 
 Chunk, where various layers of coal lie hori- 
 zontally so close together that the whole 
 makes up a thickness of sixty feet. At first 
 people thought that the whole mountain was 
 a solid mass of coal ; but by-and-by, after they 
 had opened a vast quarry, in steps all round, 
 like an ancient Eoman amphitheatre, they 
 came to the bottom, and then discovered that 
 this group of coal-beds rolls over and down 
 both sides of the mountain. Many hundred 
 thousand tons a year are taken out of these 
 mines, which present a grand appearance. In 
 other parts of the anthracite-coal region the 
 gangways are driven in at the edges of streams, 
 and little railroads branch off into them 
 from the main railroads coming up from the 
 cities. Inside, there are rooms or breasts, 
 rising with the coal from the level gangway 
 to the outcrop at the summits or on the high 
 hill-sides; and the coal, as it is mined, is al- 
 lowed to slide down these breasts or shoots to 
 where the cars stand ready in the gangway to 
 
COAL-! EDS. 89 
 
 receive it. In other parts of the region the 
 mining is done on the English plan, by deep 
 shafts, or more frequently by slopes at various 
 angles, with great s team-engines at the mouth, 
 letting down cars upon inclined railroads to 
 the gangways at the bottom. 
 
 The different coal-beds are distinguished 
 from each other by characteristic qualities : 
 one is harder, and another softer ; one is divided 
 into several layers, and another is more solid; 
 one has an abundance of sulphur and iron in 
 it, and another is quite free from these inju- 
 rious substances ; one has a straight fracture, 
 and another yields coal which looks gnarled 
 and curly when broken to pieces ; one will 
 have many leaves and stems of certain kinds 
 of plants, and another will show very few, or 
 leaves and stems of quite another sort. In 
 this way a bed is traced from one mining 
 property to another. 
 
 The vegetables which are found in ancient 
 coal-beds are of various species, none of which 
 now live upon this planet. Some are like 
 the horse-tail plants of the present day. In 
 the following cut (No. 1) is seen a stem with 
 two sheaths and a bud. 
 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 EQUISETUM LTELLH. CALAMITES APPROXIMATUS. 
 
 Wealden. Ponceford. natural size. 
 
 ig. 1. A stem, having two sheaths, and a bud at the lowermost joint. 
 2. Stem, with remains of roots. % not. 
 
 3. CALAMITES APPROXIMATUS, showing the curved lower end of the 
 plant.f % not. 
 
 Others belong to the order of ferns, and are 
 named commonly from the number of the 
 nerves upon their leaves, or the shape of their 
 teeth-like edges. 
 
 Others are the remains of gigantic trees, 
 with extensive roots stretching out in all direc- 
 tions, covered with rootlets, which fill the 
 " under clay" of every coal-bed. The bark of 
 these tree-stems turned into coal or cast in 
 
FIG. 1. PKCOPTERIS MCRRAYANA ; a pinnule with the fructification; mag- 
 nified. Inf. Oolite, Scarborough. 
 2. PECOPTERIS LONCHITICA. Coal-shale, France. 
 
 LONCHOPTEKIS MANTELLI. 
 
 Wealdtn, Tilgate Forest. 
 
 Fia. 1 and 2. Leaflets magnified, to show the reticulated venation. 
 3 A fragment of a frond ; nat. 
 
 Opp. p. 90. 
 
SriGMARiA PICOIDES. Carboniferous. Derbyshire. % not. 
 
 Fio. 1. Portion of a stem, with some of the rootlets (formerly con- 
 sidered as leaves) extending into the surrounding clay. 
 The internal axis is seen at a ; and the corresponding 
 groove on the portion of external surface that remains. 
 2. An outline of one of the rootlets, with a tubercle to show the 
 mode of its attachment by a ball and socket joint to the root. 
 
 ERECT STEM OF A SIGILLARTA, WITH ROOTS. 
 
 Coal Mine, near Liverpool. 
 
 a. The trunk of the tree, traversing a bed of Coal. 
 It. The roots (Stigmarice) spreading out in the Under-clay. 
 
 Opp. p. 91. 
 
FOSSILS. 91 
 
 stone moulds is commonly seen in the rocks 
 which overlie the coal-beds. 
 
 Sometimes the fruit is found, as if it had 
 been shaken down by the earthquake-con- 
 vulsions which buried up the trees. 
 
 Among the most common of all the fossils 
 of the coal is a star-shaped flower-like plant, 
 called therefore the aster ophyllites, of which 
 the following is a picture : 
 
 ASTEROPHYLLITES EQUISETIFORMIS : 
 
 Coal-shale. (Foss Flor.) 
 
92 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 Palm-trees, or something like them, called 
 Zamias and Cycades, with short stems and 
 a plumy head of long and graceful leaves, 
 grew in the ancient days of the secondary 
 coal. 
 
 FOLIAGE AND UPPER PART OF THE STEM OF CTCAS REVOLUTA. ^ noi. 
 In Kew Conservatory. 
 
 The fir and pine tribe was also represented, 
 and much of the bituminous character of some 
 coal-beds is thought to be due to the resinous 
 nature of this family of trees. Amber exuded 
 from the bark ; and when the coal is studied 
 with a microscope, small yellow spots are seen 
 scattered through it, which seem to be the 
 amber substance in the solid wood : from this, 
 no doubt, comes the principal part of the gas 
 we get from coal. 
 
COAL IN CHINA. 93 
 
 It seems generally agreed by the learned 
 that the first mention of coal, as we under- 
 stand that name, occurs about two thousand 
 years ago, in the writings of Theophrastus, 
 a pupil of Aristotle. He devoted the long 
 period of one hundred and six years to scien- 
 tific inquiry, and died lamenting that the 
 shortness of life prevented any great attain- 
 ments. About twenty of his works have been 
 preserved ; and in his book on stones he re- 
 marks, " Those fossil substances called coals, 
 and broken for use, are earthy. They kindle, 
 however, and burn like wood-coal. They are 
 found in Liguria, where there is also amber 
 and ore used by smiths." Liguria was the 
 ancient name for that part of Italy of which 
 Leghorn and Genoa are now the principal 
 towns. 
 
 Coal seems to have been known to the 
 Chinese before it was known in Europe ; for 
 the earliest traveller to that country whose 
 journal we possess reported that that inge- 
 nious people " burnt a black stone which was 
 as good fuel as wood." Their borings are 
 done with a rope, and their mines are some 
 of them deep. 
 
 The Bible mentions coals of fire earlier 
 
94 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 than Theophrastus ; for they are spoken of by 
 the prophets, and even in the time of Moses ; 
 but at that period the word was used to 
 signify any sort of fuel. The Saxon word 
 col, the German kohl and the Danish kul are 
 all names in those languages for mineral coal t 
 which seems to have been an old British 
 word, now represented in Irish by the word 
 guel, and in the Cornish dialect by kolon to 
 this day. Indeed, some antiquaries zeal- 
 ously contend that a flint axe found stuck in 
 a vein of coal in Monmouthshire proves that 
 the early natives of England were acquainted 
 with this useful substance. But one would 
 think that, if the early Britons had been 
 acquainted with mineral coal, it would have 
 continued in use : therefore, the fact that it 
 has not, must be considered a serious objec- 
 tion to the supposition. Charters still exist, 
 showing that coal was known and used in 
 England during the ninth and tenth centu- 
 ries, although the Newcastle pits were not 
 taken under royal protection till 1239. In 
 1245, we find a regular system of collieries 
 and coal-vessels arranged for the conveyance 
 of " sea-coal/' as it was long called, because it 
 was taken by sea along the coasts to London 
 
COAL IN ENGLAND. 95 
 
 and other ports. But at that period it was 
 not plentiful in London; for in 1306 King 
 Edward I. forbade, by proclamation the 
 burning of coal in the city, on account of 
 its sulphurous smoke and smell. As wood 
 became scarce in England from neglect of 
 planting new forests, mineral coal gradually 
 came into use ; yet, as late as 1600, Stowe 
 relates that " the nice dames of London would 
 not come into any house or room where sea- 
 coals were burned, nor willingly eat of the 
 meat that was either sod or roasted with sea- 
 coal fires." It has not been long ago that 
 many of the French had so great a prejudice 
 against the use of coals that landlords ejected 
 tenants for using them, and drawing-rooms 
 were almost emptied of guests when warmed 
 with a coal-fire. In America, where we burn 
 anthracite coal chiefly, all this sounds strange 
 enough; but a visit to Pittsburg, where the 
 bituminous coal is altogether used, will rea- 
 dily explain it. By-and-by coals found their 
 way into the palace of royalty ; and so large 
 a tax was raised from coals imported into 
 London that it aided considerably in the 
 rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral and the fifty- 
 two parish churches destroyed by the great 
 
96 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 fire of 1666. The British coal-trade has now 
 reached thirty millions of tons. 
 
 Coals with seventy different names are in 
 the English markets, names derived from 
 the localities whence they are procured, as 
 Wallsend, Newcastle, Welsh, &c. ; but many 
 of these are so much alike that the coal-mer- 
 chants themselves find it difficult to state 
 a difference between them. The American 
 market is quite as full of names, such as 
 Diamond, Peach Orchard, Buck Mountain, 
 Lykin's Valley, Lehigh, Cumberland, Broad- 
 top, Alleghany, Westmoreland, Blossburg, 
 &c. &c. Many 01 these are the names of coal- 
 regions or single basins ; and many others are 
 the names of single mines or beds of coal. 
 The geologist recognises only three great 
 kinds, bituminous, semi-bituminous and an- 
 thracite. The English geologist has sub- 
 divided these into fourteen sorts of coal, 
 according as some yield white and others red 
 or black ashes ; some burn quickly, and others 
 slowly; some produce much smoke, and others 
 little ; some cake together as they burn, and 
 others crumble into fine pieces. All have dis- 
 tinct values for these different qualities, accord- 
 ing to the kind of use to be made of them. 
 
ANTHEACITE. 97 
 
 The principal varieties of bituminous coal 
 are the caking, cubic, splint and cannel coals, 
 all very bituminous, yielding smoke and gas. 
 
 Anthracite, or " blind coal," is not bitumi- 
 nous, and does not smoke or soil the fingers. 
 It is a natural coke, found in South Wales, 
 in Belgium and in Eastern Pennsylvania so 
 plentifully that whole cities use it and are 
 entirely free from smoke, which is a great 
 advantage ; for in London, Liverpool, Pitts- 
 burg and other cities which use bituminous 
 or smoking coals, the new buildings soon 
 become dark and dingy with soot. The an- 
 thracite coal-beds were originally, however, 
 as bituminous as the rest, and in fact can be 
 traced along so as to be proved to be the very 
 same deposits. How the bitumen or oily and 
 gaseous parts have been separated and driven 
 off, so as to leave hard, crystalline anthracite, 
 it would be hard to tell. The effect has been 
 produced in Wales by the intrusion of trap 
 dikes or ancient lava currents ; but nothing 
 of that kind is visible in the anthracite 
 regions of America. It is possible that warm 
 gases or steam from below have penetrated 
 the cracked crust of the earth and turned the 
 bituminous coal-beds into anthracite; and this 
 
 Q 9 
 
98 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 is the more probable, seeing that the bitumi- 
 nous coal-beds lie very flat and undisturbed, 
 whereas the anthracite coal-beds are tossed 
 and crumpled, and even sometimes turned 
 quite over on their backs, forming long, 
 pointed, narrow troughs or basins, with 
 wrinkled sides ; while the rocks which enclose 
 the coal-beds are baked as if by heat and 
 broken into millions of fragments b) the 
 movements to which they have been sub- 
 jected : so that it would have been an easy 
 thing for hot vapours from below to find 
 their way to the surface through innumerable 
 cracks. It is a curious fact that at the 
 eastern end of all the anthracite basins the 
 coal is hardest and heaviest of all ; while at 
 the western ends of the same basins it con- 
 tains from ten to fourteen per cent, of volatile 
 matter. Going still farther west, to Broad 
 Top, Cumberland and the Alleghany Moun- 
 tains, we find the semi-bituminous coal-beds 
 containing from fifteen to twenty per cent. ; 
 while the Ohio River coals contain from 
 thirty-five to fifty per cent. In Arkansas, 
 the anthracite coal appears again; but in 
 California and Central America all the coal 
 yet discovered belongs to the tertiary forma- 
 
COAL IN GERMANY. 99 
 
 tion, and is very soft and smoky and full of 
 ashes. Such, also, is the coal of Texas and 
 of the head- waters of the Missouri and Judith 
 Rivers. The age of the Richmond, Dan River 
 and Deep River coal-basins, in Eastern Vir- 
 ginia and North Carolina, is midway between 
 the old coal-measures of Pennsylvania and the 
 West and these modern tertiary coal-mea- 
 sures of the Pacific coast. 
 
 In Germany there is a kind of soft, earthy 
 " brown coal" much in use, which is made into 
 bricks and fed into great china-ware stoves 
 with hinged tin gloves. It is a dirty, crumbly 
 fuel, but the best the poor people can get. 
 In Wales there is a variety called by the cot- 
 tagers stone-coal. It is found generally in very 
 small pieces, which are mixed with clay into 
 " coal balls." They are difficult to light at 
 first, but, when once ignited, will burn so long, 
 and so slowly, that the fire is not extinguished 
 for years. The good housewives vie with each 
 other in the taste with which these balls are 
 piled into the grate, at the top of the fire, to 
 supply the destruction below. It is considered 
 quite a calamity if the fire goes out. There 
 was a company once formed in New York to 
 mix the broken and fine refuse coal of Potts- 
 
100 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 ville and Mauch Chunk with clay, to make into 
 similar bricks or balls for the Philadelphia 
 market ; but it was found to be too costly at 
 the present price of coal. Hills of this refuse 
 coal are annually washed down the rivers by 
 the rains into the sea. At some future day so 
 great a waste will be prevented. The coal 
 comes out of the mine in great lumps, and is 
 crushed between iron rollers set with teeth, 
 and shot down long inclined planes into the 
 cars, which take it to the cities. In England, 
 great cranes let down the cars, full of soft 
 coal which will not bear much handling, into 
 the holds of vessels lying far below. 
 
 That coal has been so long made ready in 
 the earth for men to use it, we may regard 
 as an eminent and admirable result of the 
 Creator's wise use of the past and seemingly 
 useless exuberance of vegetable nature; for 
 thus the decay of the earth's ancient beauty 
 is made subservient to the comfort and pros- 
 perity of the future generations of its inhabi- 
 tants. Moreover, nothing is more remarkable 
 than this " gathering up of fragments, that 
 nothing be lost," to be observed in all God's 
 works; and so strikingly is this perceived 
 in every deeper discovery of scientific truth 
 
LESSONS. 101 
 
 that men of science are prepared to assert 
 that no new matter has been added to our 
 world, but that the whole record of natural 
 history is simply the history of oh.a.nges, won- 
 derful and varied, and perhaps; still inex-' 
 haustible. 
 
 "Well, now," said Edward, "vlien I look 
 at the spring buds and blossoms, I like to 
 think they are all God's new work just fin- 
 ished : as David says, ' Thou renewest the 
 face of the earth/ ' 
 
 "You may enjoy that pleasure still, my 
 boy," said his father; "for are not the skill 
 and benevolence of our heavenly Father more 
 wonderful still, when new and beautiful fruits 
 and flowers are created from the old soil and 
 gases, so disagreeable to our senses?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but I should like to find out 
 something really fresh created,' actually lately 
 formed by God." 
 
 " We must leave the world of matter, then, 
 my dear Edward, and use the eyes of our 
 minds ; and then we may discern that every 
 infant possesses a newly-created spirit, one 
 sent into this world to be educated and trained 
 for immortality through the redemption by 
 
 Jesus Christ. Thus, infancy and childhood 
 9* 
 
102 COAL AND COMBUSTIBLES. 
 
 in a family are a precious trust. How care- 
 ful we should all be of the lessons we teach 
 their new souls, which, though only now com- 
 mencing their existence, are nevertheless des- 
 tined to'- live < forever either in happiness or 
 
PECOPTERIS SILLIMAXI ; nat. Coal Shale. Ohio 
 
 a. The Stern. 
 
 b. Leaf-stalk, or petiole. 
 
 c. Leaf, or frond, which is bipinnate. 
 
 d. Leaflets, or pinnae; the upper, d, are entire; the lower, e. are pinnatifid 
 /. The pinnules, lobes, or segments. 
 y. The midrib, or median vein. 
 
 /. The veins The veins are introduced in the leaflets, d; but in the lower 
 ones, <?, the midribs only are marked. 
 
 IN r EUROPTEKi.-5 ACUMINATA; nat. 
 
 In Coal-shale, Yorkshire. 
 See page 80. 
 
 SPHENOPTERIS MANTELLI ; nat. 
 Wealdcn, TUqate Forest. 
 
 Orm n "[09. 
 
PLANS. 103 
 
 OHAPTEE IV. 
 
 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 IT was summer-time, and the weather so 
 unusually hot that Edward and Alice spent 
 most of their leisure hours in their favourite 
 grotto, more attractive than ever now, from 
 the knowledge they were acquiring of the 
 materials of which it was constructed. Like 
 most active young people, they were continu- 
 ally devising and attempting new improve- 
 ments ; and the sultry weather suggested the 
 delights of a cooling fountain, which, after 
 some surveying and planning, Edward under- 
 took to contrive. 
 
 There was a mill-dam not far off: so a few 
 yards of gutta-percha tubing sufficed to bring 
 water to his basin, or, as he chose to call it, his 
 reservoir, which he dug with mathematical pre- 
 cision in the centre of a small .grass-plat, and 
 lined neatly with clay, ornamented also with 
 little pebbles stuck in regular patterns. The 
 
104 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 tubing was brought up amidst some rock-work 
 in the middle, and furnished with a tap. Soon, 
 therefore, a small jet of brilliant drops sparkled 
 in the sunshine, adding their pleasant melody 
 to the sweet song of birds, which, to Alice's great 
 admiration, speedily learned to slake their thirst 
 in the tiny pond. The young engineer beheld 
 it with triumph; and, an artist having lately 
 modelled a bust of his grandfather, Edward 
 was seized with an ambition to try that art 
 and decorate his fountain with figures and 
 statues. He tempered his clay, and kneaded 
 and modelled, first, a head of Minerva, the 
 fabulous goddess of wisdom, which, however, 
 looked unmeaning without any body ; and that 
 failed. Smaller figures were more successful ; 
 but the rain spoiled them. Alice suggested 
 baking, after the fashion of potters ; and forth- 
 with his mother found her oven full of gro- 
 tesque-looking objects, which puzzled her not 
 a little, till Edward explained which was a 
 lion and which was a man. After all, how- 
 ever, they were deemed unworthy of a place 
 in the grotto ; and Mrs. Goodman made them 
 a present of a few objects in biscuit- ware, 
 which, after their numerous disappointments, 
 were thankfully accepted. 
 
CLAY. 105 
 
 The scheme had not been without benefit, 
 however; for it had discovered to the young 
 people the very various appearances and quali- 
 ties of the clay they had worked with. 
 
 " How pretty this biscuit- ware is, father!" 
 said Edward, when exhibiting his improve- 
 ments to Mr. Goodman-. " I wish I could find 
 some of the clay it is made of." 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that such a material 
 as that is never found : it undergoes a vast 
 deal of purification, or is mixed with other 
 substances to give it its delicacy. CLAY is a 
 mineral substance, opaque and dull-looking, 
 never crystallizing, often soft enough to be 
 cut or scratched by iron, though sometimes so 
 hard as to bear powdering. When breathed 
 on, most clay yields a peculiar smell, termed 
 argillaceous, from the Latin word argilla, 
 (clay;) but this smell generally arises from 
 some admixture of oxide of iron, for perfectly 
 pure clays have no odour. 
 
 Clay is spread over our country so plenti- 
 fully that some is found almost everywhere ; 
 and it is of red, yellow, blue or white colour, 
 according to the substances mixed with it. 
 All clays become plastic, or easily moulded, 
 and tenacious, by nixing with water. The 
 
106 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 purer varieties may be known by their stick- 
 ing to the tongue and feeling unctuous, or 
 greasy, to the finger. This plastic and unc- 
 tuous property is due to the proportion of 
 alumina mingling with the clay : indeed, this 
 alumina used to be called argil, as being ob- 
 tained chiefly from the argillaceous or clayey 
 earths; but it is now procured in larger pro- 
 portions from alum. Clays become so hard- 
 ened by baking that they will strike fire with 
 flint, and will bear an amazing degree of heat 
 without crumbling: hence fire-bricks are so 
 serviceable. The fire-clay of Stourbridge and 
 Windsor yields large square slabs for sugar- 
 boilers, drying-kilns, brewers' coppers, &c. 
 The white clay-beds beneath coal-beds fur- 
 nish much of the best fire-brick used in con- 
 structing blast-furnaces and the puddling-fur- 
 naces of rolling-mills. The fire-clay bricks 
 of New York and Philadelphia come from ex- 
 tensive beds of clay beneath Amboy. But 
 the common building-bricks of the cities of the 
 seaboard are made from coarser clays dug in 
 their neighbourhood. Almost all the great 
 cities of the world are built on clay and gravel 
 beds of a late age. The colour varies in dif- 
 ferent cities according Jo the amount of iron 
 
CLAY-BEDS. 107 
 
 which happens to be in the clay. The bricks 
 of Philadelphia are a soft deep red ; those of 
 New York and Boston are of a paler, yellow- 
 ish tint, and are commonly painted, which is 
 never done in Philadelphia until a house is 
 very old. - In old times the bricks which were 
 nearest the fire in the kiln, and thus burned 
 black, were used as ornamental in the walls. 
 Some of these old houses and graveyard-walls 
 still exist, and present a peculiar appearance. 
 All these clay-beds are at or near the sur- 
 face of the earth. But there were very ancient 
 clay-beds which have been turned into hard 
 rock, called clay-slate ; and when these are 
 crystallized crosswise and split into planes 
 they form slate-quarries, which furnish the 
 slates for roofs and for writing-tables. The 
 slate-quarries of Tremadoc, in North Wales, 
 are wonderful excavations made in the tops of 
 mountains, and the slates are let down by 
 long inclined planes and railroads to the sea. 
 In Pennsylvania the quarries of Slatington, on 
 the Lehigh, and others on the Delaware and 
 Hudson, are becoming equally celebrated. 
 Similar slate-quarries occur in other parts 
 of the globe, as in France and Germany. 
 Where there are no slates, shingles' of cedar or 
 
108 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 cypress are used for roofs ; but when timber is 
 scarce, then the poor people must use straw to 
 thatch their dwellings. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that the most use- 
 ful minerals are generally situated so as to be 
 easily obtained by the industry of man. Clay 
 is universally spread over the earth, and we 
 find it used in all countries, and from the most 
 remote ages, for very various purposes, from 
 the " bricks thoroughly burned/' of which the 
 tower of Babel was constructed, (Gen. xi. 3,) 
 to the glazed earthenware coffins found in 
 South Babylonia, specimens of which are now 
 in' the British Museum. Cups, plates, in- 
 scribed cylinders, tablets, water-jars, bottles, 
 dishes, and many other domestic utensils, were 
 early made of clay; and so common was its 
 use, that it is perpetually employed as a meta- 
 phor in the Scriptures. Were the Israelites 
 rebellious against God, the prophet was in- 
 structed to threaten that their princes should 
 be trodden down as the potter treadeth clay. 
 (Isa. xli. 25.) "Go down to the potter's 
 house," said Jehovah to his servant Jeremiah, 
 " and there will I cause thee to hear my 
 words/' (Jer. xviii. 1-6.) And very striking 
 must have been the message, for, lo! "he 
 
EASTERN POTTER. 
 
 Opp. p. 109. 
 
CLAY IN ENGLAND. 109 
 
 wrought a -work on the wheels. And the 
 vessel that he made of clay was marred in the 
 hand of the potter: so he made it again 
 another vessel, as seemed good to the potter 
 to make it. Then the word of the Lord came 
 to me, saying, house of Israel, cannot I do 
 with you as this potter ? saith the Lord. 
 Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so 
 are ye in mine hand." Little, probably, did 
 the potter dream of the honour put upon him, 
 as he wondered at the prophet's unwonted 
 visit ; but if he understood, as doubtless Jere- 
 miah explained the matter, how must his 
 daily occupation have henceforth taught him 
 the importance of right preparation and right 
 training for the service of the Lord, if he 
 would become a vessel fit for the Master's use 
 and glory in eternity! 
 
 Mr. Goodman went on to remark that in 
 England clay is seen being made into bricks 
 in almost every locality, with very simple 
 establishments, sometimes with scarcely even 
 a shed; and whole families are engaged, 
 women and children assisting to make the 
 most of their little patch of clay ground. 
 
 The same clay does not make both bricks 
 
 and pottery, for brick clay is often coarse and 
 10 
 
110 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 mixed with stone and fragments of rock, 
 while the plastic or potter's clay must always 
 be a finer material. It often contains, however, 
 the remains of shells, the teeth of fish, and 
 woody fibres, but all so decomposed, or rotted 
 down, as to be almost indistinguishable. All 
 the potter's clays can, when dry, be polished 
 by the finger. Ingenious lads often amuse 
 themselves by making seals and stamps of this 
 clay and engraving and polishing them easily ; 
 and they will gradually become very hard by 
 exposure to the sun and air. When made 
 into a paste, some of these potter's clays are 
 slightly transparent ; but they become very 
 hard, and cannot be melted in a furnace. 
 Some of them become white, others red, in 
 great heat : so that they are singularly well 
 adapted for cooking-utensils, as well as for 
 cups and saucers, and other domestic articles. 
 The finest china-ware is made from porcelain 
 earth, or kaolin, as the Chinese call it, which 
 results from the decomposed felspar of granite, 
 and varies in colour from the purest white to 
 yellow or red. The kaolin of Cornwall is so 
 white and so plentiful that for miles the 
 ground looks as if covered with snow; but 
 the Chinese and Japanese kaolins are gene- 
 
PORCELAIN CLAY. Ill 
 
 rally whiter, and more unctuous to the touch, 
 than those of Europe. In Brandon, Vermont, 
 there is a very remarkable quarry of kaolin, a 
 hundred feet deep, alongside of a quarry of 
 lignite or tertiary coal full of leaves of trees 
 and three-sided fruits, none of which are now 
 known to grow upon the earth. Professor 
 Hitchcock, of Amherst College, has described 
 more than twenty varieties of these fruits. 
 This coal is used to burn the kaolin and smelt 
 the iron-ore which is also found in this singular 
 deposit^ The State of Delaware also furnishes 
 large quantities of kaolin; and the manufac- 
 ture of fine china once succeeded very well in 
 Philadelphia, but was given up at last, owing 
 to the competition of the foreign article. In 
 Europe the finest china is now made. The 
 royal manufactory at Sevres, near Paris, pro- 
 duces ware of extraordinary beauty and cost- 
 liness. But China has been the country of 
 clay-bakers for thousands of years ; and the 
 porcelain dishes, vases and towers of china 
 are some of them a thousand years old and 
 preserved with religious care. It is all made 
 of kaolin or the finer kinds of clay. 
 
 This kaolin furnishes our tea-services ; but 
 it undergoes considerable preparation, by boil- 
 
112 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 ing, washing, stirring, skimming and settling, 
 and has generally some addition of ground 
 flint, and such things as experience suggests 
 for beauty or for strength. Biscuit-ware 
 ornaments are made of this material, with 
 ivory-white or ground bones to render it 
 opaque. Brooches, buttons, mosaic pavement 
 and some artificial gems are made of this clay. 
 Pipe- clay is very similar to kaolin. The best 
 is quite white, and is found near Poole and 
 Purbeck, in Dorsetshire; but some is gray, 
 some black, and some violet colour. Some of 
 the white clays become gray in a low heat, 
 and white again when subjected to a stronger 
 heat. 
 
 It has rather puzzled observers to discover 
 the cause of this very curious effect; and 
 many reasons have been suggested. The 
 most plausible theory is that the natural 
 softness of these clays was owing to mine- 
 ral oil, which burned, in low temperature, 
 to coal, and thus tinged them black, while 
 the higher degrees of heat caused it to fly 
 off in vapour, and left the clay white ; for 
 much of the decomposed animal and vege- 
 table carbon of all ages remains in all clays. 
 This pipe-clay is not only used, as its name 
 
FULLER'S EARTH. 113 
 
 implies, for tobacco-pipes, but also for the 
 cleaning of white leather used in soldiers' 
 accoutrements and for the fulling or scouring 
 of woollen cloths. Indeed, any fine clay that 
 does not stain may be used for this purpose. 
 Its cleansing property consists in its quickly 
 absorbing all the oil or grease which it 
 touches, while it also thickens the cloth by 
 causing the little hairs or fibres to curl up. 
 
 Fuller's earth is found in Surrey, Hamp- 
 shire and Bedfordshire, (England,) and is of a 
 greenish-brown colour. It was formerly deemed 
 so important to the woollen trade that its ex- 
 portation w r as prohibited ; but now soap has 
 rather superseded it. In Sweden the clay 
 we term " fuller's earth" is called stone- 
 marrow, from its appearance; and in Grim 
 Tartary it is used instead of soap for wash- 
 ing. Mothers often use it in the nursery; 
 for it is very cleansing, and when there is 
 any unhealthy secretion, such as often arises 
 in the folds of infant children's skin, it is use- 
 ful in absorbing this heating moisture and 
 thus giving the skin time to recover its 
 proper functions. 
 
 This mode of cleansing cloth is called full- 
 ing, from the Latin wor&fullo, a fuller of cloth; 
 H 10* 
 
114 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 and this property of clay was known in such 
 very early times that " the fuller's field" is 
 mentioned as a conspicuous spot in the reign 
 of Hezekiah, and " fuller's soap" is used by 
 Malachi as an illustration to explain the 
 purifying influences of the Redeemer's les- 
 sons. Mai. iii. 2. 
 
 Loam is an impure kind of potter's clay, 
 mixed with mica and iron-ochre, and is 
 often used to correct the dryness of land. 
 Corn grows best on clayey lands : so that 
 the farmer often spreads loam as a manure. 
 There is a green sand in New Jersey, Dela- 
 ware, Maryland and Virginia, which lies upon 
 clay, and is a remarkable manure for the 
 barren, sandy lands along the Atlantic coasts, 
 making the pine-forest soil as fertile as a 
 garden. But, when spread upon the soil of 
 the hills back of Trenton, Philadelphia and 
 Baltimore, it is of no value whatever, because 
 its fertilizing quality depends upon the green 
 potash that is in it, and these hill-soils come 
 from rocks which have already more potash 
 in them than they want. They want, there- 
 fore, not green-sand marl, but shell marl, 
 or lime, or plaster of Paris, or phosphate 
 
SLATE. 115 
 
 manures: All this the farmer learns who 
 studies agricultural chemistry. 
 
 All clay is soft in its earliest natural con- 
 dition, but it becomes hard in time, even 
 without burning ; for the ancient cities of 
 Babylon seem to have been built entirely 
 of sun-dried bricks, which are remarkably 
 hard and compact ; but the slate of which I 
 spoke as forming mountains shows how hard 
 clay may become by the aid of time and 
 pressure, moisture, heat and the forces of 
 crystallization. "We find it in all stages of 
 firmness, from the slate-clay, which is found 
 in flat tabular fragments easily breaking 
 down in water, to the clay-slate of the Pent- 
 land Hills and the adhesive slate of Mont- 
 martre near Paris, occurring between blocks 
 of impure gypsum, in large straight plates, like 
 sheets of pasteboard. It absorbs water ra- 
 pidly, with air-bubbles and a crackling sound. 
 So firm and smooth are the large slabs in 
 which slate occurs in North Wales, that a 
 single slab will sometimes suffice for a road- 
 bridge over a mountain-stream, and they 
 are commonly used as fences. Many country 
 stiles between fields are made of slates in 
 Devonshire. They lie so evenly, too, in the 
 
116 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 quarries there, that it is easy to pull one out 
 for writing, though, of course, they are im- 
 proved by grinding and polishing the surface 
 in some degree. 
 
 The slate of these old rocks varies in colour 
 from nearly white to gray, green, black, and 
 sometimes striped. Silica, or flint, sometimes 
 mingles with the clay, forming slate, and ren- 
 ders it more or less brittle. The coloured 
 slates are used for the roofing of houses, the 
 flooring of dairies and conservatories, and, 
 when tastefully disposed in patterns, look 
 pretty and cheerful. Though clay so readily 
 imbibes water, good slate is quite imper- 
 vious to moisture, which renders it so fit 
 for domestic purposes, and in architecture for 
 preventing the ascent of moisture from the 
 foundation up the wall of a building. A 
 layer of slates is, therefore, laid between 
 the stones of the foundation and the first 
 courses of wall-brick. The blackest and 
 finest-grained specimens are made into 
 school-slates. Tombstones, fancy tables, 
 vases, flower-pots and many other articles 
 are made of the prettier varieties. The older 
 slate-rocks appear to have been subjected to 
 many convulsions of nature, as the strata are 
 
HONE-STONE. 117 
 
 much broken and heaved up ; and the fine 
 mountain scenery of the White Mountains 
 and Blue Kidge, of the range of Snowden, in 
 Wales, and of the Alps of Switzerland, is due 
 to this. Most of the high peaks which as- 
 cend above the fields of eternal snow are 
 aiguilles, or needles, of clay-slate rock. Near 
 the slate-quarries of Wales it seems a com- 
 plete world of slate, and the village churches 
 and churchyards look as if they were all in 
 mourning, from the black slate walls and 
 tombstones so prevalent there. Some of the 
 latter are prettily carved, and relieved by 
 inscriptions in gilt letters. 
 
 The hone-stone of Turkey, used for sharp- 
 ening knives, and the whetstone of Germany, 
 for gardeners' scythes, are both compact sorts 
 of clay-slate. It is either of a greenish gray 
 or pale drab colour. Though so smooth and 
 hard, it is easily cut with the knife or grav- 
 ing-tool, and is therefore used by artists for 
 delicate sculpture. So finely and elaborately 
 may it be carved, that a piece of German hone- 
 stone only the size of a small octavo volume, 
 having the scene of naming John the Baptist 
 exquisitely depicted on it by the celebrated 
 Albert Durer, has been valued at two thou- 
 
118 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 sand five hundred dollars. Clay can thus be 
 made to rise in value by genius and patient 
 labour. This same sculpture required six 
 months' close application, and was then deemed 
 to have been quickly accomplished. 
 
 Clay forms the cement of many conglo- 
 merate or mixed rocks ; such as toadstone and 
 gray-wacke, which is variegated with frag- 
 ments of quartz, flinty slate, felspar, mica 
 and clay-slate. These fragments vary in size 
 from that of a hen's egg to little grains. 
 Clay-stone is hard and purple, like petrified 
 clay. Indeed, clay mingles so much with 
 sand and limestone rocks that it is often 
 impossible to determine where they pass into 
 one another. Geologists call them argilla- 
 ceous sandstones, or sandy clay-rock, and 
 argillaceous limestones, or calcareous clay- 
 rock. All the rocks of the world are made 
 up partly of clay, partly of sand and partly 
 of iron, potash, soda, magnesia, or other ma- 
 terials ; but clay is the next most abundant 
 after sand. Sometimes near volcanoes, or in 
 countries where volcanoes once existed which 
 are now extinct, the clay-rocks have hardened 
 and burned by nature into various and beauti- 
 ful minerals. 
 
POEPHYEY. 119 
 
 Some varieties of porphyry seem to have 
 been thus produced. The name porphyry sig- 
 nifies purple, from the Greek word porphura, 
 as that was the usual colour of this stone 
 used by the ancients. In the walls of our grotto 
 there is a beautiful specimen of Egyptian 
 porphyry , as well as other varieties. It may 
 be observed how compact and close-grained 
 it is, of a bright-reddish purple, wilh white 
 marks. It certainly does look something like 
 baked clay, but it does not smell much when 
 wetted ; for when clay has been once heated 
 it loses the plastic quality and clayey smell, 
 which cannot be restored unless acid is added 
 to it. 
 
 Porphyry is a compound rock, with large 
 crystals of felspar (sand-clay and potash or 
 soda) so firmly imbedded in cement as to 
 become the hardest of all rocks, and, when 
 polished, perhaps the most enduring. Though 
 it derives its name from the purple variety, 
 it exhibits almost every colour, green, deep 
 red, black, dark brown, gray and flesh colour. 
 Quartz, felspar, mica and fragments of other 
 porphyries form brilliant spots, often finely 
 contrasted, both in colour and substance, with 
 the material in which they are imbedded. 
 
120 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 The spots in some porphyries are very small, 
 as in one of the specimens ; in others they run 
 into large blotches of an inch broad; occa- 
 sionally they exhibit veins, and are greatly 
 valued for architectural purposes, especially 
 the more crystalline sorts. There is abun- 
 dance in the island of Minorca, far superior 
 to all the best Italian marbles ; and the 
 immense strata of Egypt and Arabia Petraea 
 are still inexhaustible. In Germany, Eng- 
 land and Ireland, it occurs in detached no- 
 dules; and near Blair Athol, in Scotland, 
 there is a fine example of a bed of porphyry 
 slate in rocks of mica. 
 
 Porphyry is not often used now, as it is very 
 difficult to cut, from its extreme hardness. In 
 Egypt there were three fine columns of black 
 porphyry, called Cleopatra's Needles ; and seve- 
 ral similar ones are seen at Rome in some 
 of the most ancient buildings. One of these 
 is in the tomb of Constantia, the Emperor 
 Constantino's daughter. In the Tuilleries, at 
 Paris, there were busts of Apollo and twelve 
 emperors, all in porphyry; and at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle are twelve exquisite columns, brought 
 from Italy by Charlemagne. In the middle 
 ages the art of cutting porphyry seems to 
 
POKPHYRY. 121 
 
 have been lost, as Addison, who was curious 
 in such matters, visited Rome in 1700, and 
 relates that even then he could only find one 
 workman attempting to carve it, and the pro- 
 cess was so slow and the success so indif- 
 ferent that he could scarcely gain a liveli- 
 hood. Many persons have tried to revive the 
 art, and devised methods of softening the 
 stone, or grinding it with an untoothed iron 
 saw and powdered freestone; and lately the 
 Duke of Wellington's sarcophagus has been 
 cut out of a boulder of porphyry which had 
 lain for ages upon the Treffray estate at Lux- 
 alyan, in Cornwall. It is of a rich, reddish- 
 brown colour, with yellow markings. Her- 
 aldic arms have been carved on a boss at each 
 end. 
 
 At first thought, it seems strange that any 
 art once known should be ever lost. But per- 
 haps we need not wonder at it much, for his- 
 tory details so many wars desolating the earth 
 that the arts of peace must sometimes have 
 been forgotten. Moreover, the possessors of 
 knowledge were often too anxious to render 
 themselves important by treasuring it as a 
 secret, instead of regarding it as a talent 
 intrusted to them for the general good. 
 11 
 
122 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 Many of the crayons used in drawing are 
 really slate or hardened clayey earth: the 
 black, gray and red chalks are mostly of these 
 materials, which are sometimes boiled in oil to 
 render them compact enough for use. 
 
 The stiff blue clay, lying to so great a depth 
 almost everywhere round and beneath London, 
 is a marine deposit, containing numberless re- 
 mains of extraordinary sea-animals, none of 
 which now exist. A similar sort of clay is 
 observed at the foot of the Himalaya Moun- 
 tains of India. This blue clay forms the re- 
 servoir whence the deep wells of London are 
 supplied with fine soft water. 
 
 "Ah, I suppose the clay holds the water," 
 said Edward; " for it all sank in my pond till 
 I plastered it with clay." 
 
 " Just so," answered Mr. Goodman: " there- 
 fore you can easily understand the important 
 use of these beds of clay in the formation of 
 our earth, for collecting and retaining that 
 necessary of animal and vegetable life, water; 
 and when these natural reservoirs overflow, 
 streams trickle through the soil, and, joinin 
 others, form rivers, lakes and seas. When 
 the basin structure of the rocks is extensive 
 and the waters run down the slopes under 
 
 o 
 
ALUMINA. 123 
 
 ground for many miles, they rise in Artesian 
 wells to the surface with great force. The 
 Du Pont well at Louisville, in Kentucky, is 
 two thousand one hundred and eighty feet 
 deep; and the water, which comes seventy- 
 five miles in a straight line from hills five 
 hundred feet above the level of the city, rises 
 from the mouth of the well in a jet one hun- 
 dred feet in the air, with a force to carry up 
 small stones. Limestone-clay rocks form the 
 bottom of this layer of water. The well at 
 St. Louis, in Missouri, is two hundred feet 
 deeper, and was intended to furnish pure 
 water for the sugar-refinery of Mr. Belcher, 
 who had it dug ; but the water turned out to 
 be salt, and worthless for that purpose." 
 
 Mr. Goodman went on to say that clay is 
 useful also as a purifying agent in manufac- 
 turing sugar, chiefly by preventing its cooling 
 too quickly; and gardeners also use it in 
 grafting trees. 
 
 Alumina, or pure clay, is so closely allied 
 to common clay that we ought not to omit its 
 mention now. These pretty crystals of alum 
 are only one form of alumina, produced, by a 
 long and troublesome process of melting, boil- 
 ing and washing, from a primitive clayey- 
 
124 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 looking earth found in Sweden, England, 
 Saxony and Italy. Alumina is seldom found 
 native, although it is so widely diffused in 
 nature as to mingle in almost every soil and 
 rock. It is this ingredient that gives clay its 
 plastic or moulding quality; and yet when 
 added to tallow it hardens it. Sir Humphry 
 Davy demonstrated alumina to be an oxide 
 of the metal aluminum. In pure oxygen gas 
 this metal burns with so dazzling a light that 
 the eye can scarcely bear it, and the heat is 
 intense. 
 
 The crystallized salts of alumina, known as 
 alum, are largely used, not only in hardening 
 tallow, but in dyeing calico and tanning lea- 
 ther, and making porcelain, bricks, pottery 
 and crucibles. It is used also in preparing 
 the artists' paint, called lake; and aluminous 
 earth, finely powdered and tinged, constitutes 
 many of our coloured crayons. Printers' 
 cushions, and the blocks used by calico- 
 printers, are often rubbed with burned alum 
 to remove any greasiness which would pre- 
 vent the ink and dye from sticking to the 
 surface. Wood well soaked in a solution of 
 alum does not easily burn; paper steeped in 
 it resists both fire and water, fitting it for 
 
SHALE. 125 
 
 holding gunpowder. Alum mbted in milk 
 helps the separation of the butter; while a 
 very small quantity will clear turbid water. 
 It is also used in making pyrophorus, or air- 
 tinder, a material which takes fire merely on 
 exposure to the air. At the English alum- 
 works it is crystallized in the shape of small 
 barrels, the inner portions of which exhibit 
 beautiful crystals; but a better sort comes 
 from Eome ; in small cubes. The Chinese pre- 
 pare large quantities of alum, with which 
 India is chiefly supplied. Medicinally, it is 
 valuable as an astringent, particularly for 
 healing and hardening the gums. 
 
 Many of the clays yield a considerable 
 quantity of alum in an efflorescence, by ex- 
 posure to the air 'or the heat of a furnace, 
 such as the sulphuretted clay of La Tolfa, in 
 Italy, and the pyritaceous clay of Schwemsal, 
 in Saxony. 
 
 Shale is another sort of bituminous clay, 
 from which alum is easily procured by burn- 
 ing or calcining it in a furnace. There is a 
 large bed of this near Whitby, employing 
 many hands in the manufacture of alum. 
 Few persons would ever have thought of alum 
 being prepared from clay; but it is very inte- 
 11* 
 
126 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 resting to know the history of the materials 
 we use in ordinary life. 
 
 Edward and Alice thanked their father for 
 his information, and professed themselves al- 
 most glad of the unexpected failure of their 
 experiments, as it had led to his notice. But 
 he told them he had some other interesting 
 things to tell them about clay, if they were 
 not tired of listening to him. 
 
 Oh, no, they said: they could listen all 
 day. 
 
 He then described to them the clay-banks 
 of the Hudson and New England rivers, with 
 their curious balls of clay, which have excited 
 the astonishment of geologists as well as of 
 common travellers. These deposits are called 
 post-tertiary clays, and are the last formations 
 of this continent before the history of man 
 commenced. They were deposited when the 
 ocean covered all the Atlantic seaboard, or 
 " tide-water country," as it is called in Vir- 
 ginia, and flowed in broad straits up the val- 
 leys of the Hudson, Mohawk, Connecticut and 
 Housatonic Rivers into the valley of the St. 
 Lawrence. At that time New England and 
 New York must have been three great islands, 
 like what Newfoundland and Anticosta are now. 
 
CLAY-BANKS. 127 
 
 "When the continent slowly rose, the ocean re- 
 tired to its present limits, but the clays it 
 had deposited in these straits were carried up 
 high into the air. As the land rose more in 
 Canada than it did in New Jersey, these clay- 
 beds are only fifty or sixty feet above the 
 water-level in the neighbourhood of West Point 
 and Newburgh, but are two hundred and fifty 
 or three hundred feet above Lake Champlain 
 at Burlington, and an equal height above 
 water-level at Montreal. The rains have 
 washed these clay hills into ravines and steep 
 cliffs, in which the sand-martins build in- 
 numerable villages of holes; and sometimes 
 there happen avalanches of sand and clay, 
 which bury houses and people under them. 
 Such a calamity happened a few years ago at 
 Troy. 
 
 Out of these banks of clay the river-floods 
 and rain-storms wash shells and the curious 
 shapes of clay which induced me, said Mr. 
 G-oodman, to go into this long description. 
 They are of every variety, round as marbles 
 or balls, egg-shaped, long pipe-like cylinders, 
 dumb-bells, potato-formed, flat like plates, 
 ring or quoit shaped, and sometimes showing 
 some fine stem or piece of sand in the centre. 
 
128 CLAY AND SLATE. 
 
 Great collections of them have been made; 
 but no one has yet quite satisfactorily ex- 
 plained the manner of their formation. We 
 only know that all clay seems to form itself, 
 when permitted, into circular forms; and you 
 can tell a rock that has a large quantity of 
 clay in its composition, by the roundness of 
 its corners, in a few months or years after it 
 has been blasted or broken into sharp edges. 
 
 There is another remarkable circumstance 
 connected with the ancient deposit of clay.' I 
 refer to the red clays of the formation under- 
 neath the coal, and to the red clays also which 
 were deposited in the ancient valley of the 
 Connecticut and in the ancient estuary of 
 Newark and Morristown. These red clays 
 are now red rocks; but they were once the 
 shore of a shallow sea, on which the waves of 
 the tide flowed up and down; for, when the 
 rock is quarried, there are the marks which 
 the waves have left; there are the marks of 
 rain and hail drops on the once soft mud; 
 there are thousands of tadpole-nests, or the 
 nests of some small fish, such as you may see. 
 in the clear sandy bottoms of our present 
 streams; and there are the footprints of over 
 an hundred and twenty different kinds of 
 
FOOTPRINTS. 129 
 
 worms, crabs, reptiles and birds, in lines so 
 plainly marked that no doubt is left upon 
 the mind that thousands of these creatures 
 wandered to and fro upon that ancient shore, 
 leaving their footsteps to be covered up and 
 preserved by each returning tide. Some day 
 I will take you to see the great collection of 
 these tracks at Amherst. Meanwhile, come into 
 my library, and I will show you the pictures 
 of them in a noble book, which the State of 
 Massachusetts has enabled Dr. Hitchcock to 
 print, to show the world these wonders of the 
 great Creator's goodness and skill. 
 
130 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 THE grotto-building had sent many a party 
 out to collect curiosities, and, combining busi- 
 ness with pleasure, they carried their dinner 
 with them and brought home their provision- 
 baskets laden with shells or stones. Edward 
 usually carried his geological hammer with 
 him, and found ample work in breaking the 
 rocks to pieces to discover their composition. 
 Among their various parts he occasionally 
 found nodules or balls of hornstone, or layers 
 of flint, which excited his admiration by their 
 glittering smoothness and the sharp edges 
 which the broken pieces had. He thought 
 that they might be even used for knives in 
 cases of necessity ; and he remembered having 
 seen such used in old flint-lock guns. 
 
 His father told him that in the interior of 
 the country there were places where finer 
 qualities of these flints had been quarried, so to 
 
FLINT. 131 
 
 speak, by the Indians, long before the arrival 
 of white men ; and the farmers find, in plough- 
 ing near such places, multitudes of broken 
 pieces and chips of flint, and perfect arrow-heads 
 and knives ; for the natives had no knowledge 
 of iron, or could not make it. In England 
 and France there are many similar places ; and 
 the museums of Europe are full of specimens 
 of the skill of the aboriginal tribes of men 
 inhabiting the country before the cultivated 
 Greeks and Eomans came among them from 
 the East and South. In fact, it seems as if 
 all men at first used flint, and afterwards 
 copper hardened with a little tin, and finally 
 iron. The Egyptian priests, like the Mexican 
 priests, sacrificed with sharp black stones for 
 knives, made of a sort of volcanic flint called 
 obsidian. The barrows or mound-graves of 
 Sweden and Norway, when opened by anti- 
 quaries, yield many articles of stone buried 
 with the kings and warriors whose skeletons 
 are found in them. And it is said there have 
 been found such implements at the bottom of 
 the gravel-beds of Picardy in France, mixed 
 with the bones of extinct animals. Flint, 
 therefore, has been an important aid to man. 
 "Tell us," said Mr. Goodman, one day, turn- 
 
132 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 ing to Edward's uncle, who had come over from 
 England to visit them, and was admiring their 
 little grotto, to the great delight of the chil- 
 dren, " tell us about the chalk cliffs of Dover, 
 and the rows of round flint stones which I re- 
 member to have once seen in them when cross- 
 ing the English Channel to Calais. If I re- 
 collect right, they lie in regular rows one 
 above another, and, when the waves dash 
 against the bottom of the cliffs, the chalk falls 
 down and the balls of flint roll out and are 
 tossed about upon the shore." 
 
 "Yes," replied the uncle: "I have noticed 
 in my travels that the internal composition of 
 hills can be usually discovered by their out- 
 ward shapes, especially where they are under 
 the influence of the poweiful destroying agency 
 of water. Clay-rock hills are usually of a soft, 
 rounded aspect, while sand-rocks form sharp 
 ridges. Chalk cliffs are cut straight down, 
 with beetling heights overlooking the sea; 
 and the two shores of Dover and Calais face 
 each other in such a way that no one doubts 
 that the chalk once stretched across the 
 channel, but has since been broken through 
 and washed away by the currents of the 
 sea. Here is a picture which, at the left 
 
FLINT BALLS. 133 
 
 hand, shows these cliffs of chalk. The right 
 hand shows a very different kind of shore, 
 that of the north of Ireland, where an ancient 
 lava current has made the celebrated Giants' 
 Causeway. The middle division of the picture 
 shows how the rocks are often bent so that 
 the lowest layers rise in the middle higher 
 than the layers which are really above them; 
 and this sometimes shows itself on the sea- 
 shore. 
 
 " The flint balls in the chalk are all separated 
 from each other, and no two of them are ex- 
 actly alike. I have frequently broken them 
 open with my hammer : some are white, others 
 gray or black, many are hollow, and contain 
 a little water, or some bright crystals, while 
 others exhibit substances looking like bits of 
 sponge, shells, or other matters, their only 
 general resemblance being the white cherty 
 crust which envelopes all. When I was last 
 in England, I selected the prettiest and most 
 curious I could find ; and you shall have them 
 to fill up the vacant places in your grotto." 
 
 Mr. Goodman then explained that flints 
 consisted almost entirely of silex or silica, 
 which is an oxide of the base silicium or silicon. 
 How they got among chalk cliffs in such 
 
 12 
 
134 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 regular lines, yet each one lying quite sepa- 
 rately from all the rest, is something for the 
 chemist to explain. It is known that natural 
 hot springs often contain silica in solution, 
 that is, dissolved or melted, and that as 
 the water is evaporated, or as the silica sinks 
 to the bottom, it gradually encrusts every 
 thing in its way, or hardens into nodules such 
 as these .flint stones ; but how it leaves the 
 chalk so pure and dry is very hard to under- 
 stand. Its texture is so close and even that 
 some have fancied that flint must have been 
 originally in a state like jelly. 
 
 Flint seldom forms entire rocks, or veins 
 of rock, and never assumes any regular crys- 
 tallized shapes. It sometimes occurs in rolled 
 pieces, like tubes, with a hole through. Flints 
 are common in every part of the world and in 
 all sorts of mountains. Among those which 
 seem to be the oldest, they appear in the veins 
 of metal, but they are most abundant in chalk. 
 When rubbed together in the dark, they 
 phosphoresce, or give out light and heat, and 
 emit a peculiar smell. They are very hard, 
 but doubtless could be cut and carved ; for on 
 the ancient abbey-gates of Canterbury and 
 Colchester, in England, are some ornaments 
 
FLINT PEBBLES. 135 
 
 of cut flint ; and it is occasionally squared and 
 used for paving observatories, instead of slate 
 or lead : it is, however, more commonly pow- 
 dered, or ground, for modern use. In the 
 county of Sussex, England, there are many 
 houses and churches built of flint ; and very 
 substantial they look even now, although 
 they have been standing many years. Where 
 they are plentiful, flint pebbles are still used 
 for building, as they hold mortar firmly, 
 and really look pretty. They are very dura- 
 ble, unless fire is applied, when they cal- 
 cine and powder. Several of the precious 
 stones named in the book of the Revelation 
 as the foundations of the New Jerusalem are 
 varieties of silica or flint, symbolizing their 
 durability and strength. I have already 
 spoken of the arrow-points and spear-heads 
 of the ancient Britcns, specimens of which 
 turn up in various parts of England and 
 Wales. 
 
 " Do they not break very easily? I broke 
 several with my hammer," said Edward. 
 
 " Yes ; because you had just taken them 
 from the quarry, or the chalk-bed in which 
 they were deposited : they were, therefore, 
 brittle, as well as moist; but they dry quickly, 
 
136 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 and, when dry, assume their well-known hard 
 and refractory qualities." 
 
 Flints, Mr. Goodman stated, so very gene- 
 rally have a cavity inside, or enclose the re- 
 mains of sponges, shells and marine zoophytes, 
 that it is highly probable they are merely 
 an aggregation or collection of silex around 
 a nucleus of some organic substance, which 
 has accumulated so gradually and gently that 
 the shape of the delicate structure inside has 
 been completely preserved, as may be seen 
 with a magnifying-glass in some of those 
 brought home. Thin slices of flint from many 
 localities have been examined by the micro- 
 scope, and all exhibit a similar network of 
 fibrous appearance, much like that of a thin 
 slice of sponge. Those beautiful fossil woods 
 brought from Antigua are composed almost 
 entirely of silica, so thoroughly introduced 
 into all the pores of the trees that their former 
 grain can be distinctly perceived, so as to be 
 named by any carpenter. When shown to 
 one, he called one of those pieces oak, and 
 another maple; but the crystalline part in the 
 large veins does certainly look very like the 
 inside of the flints from the cliffs. These 
 crystalline portions would also burn to pow- 
 
MOSS AGATES. 137 
 
 der in the fire, no doubt, though the powder 
 of the fossil wood would probably show its 
 colouring-matter. 
 
 Some of these pieces of fossil wood would 
 look very pretty sliced and polished, and 
 would then be termed chalcedonies, or agates. 
 They are often beautifully marked in regular 
 lines, and are therefore called fortification, 
 ribbon, or moss agates : indeed, they are most 
 highly valued when the internal figure resem- 
 bles some animal or plant. 
 
 M. Brogniart examined a large number of 
 moss agates, to discover some certain evidence 
 that the enclosed forms were really vege- 
 table; but he came to the conclusion that 
 they were all due to an arborescent crys- 
 tallization of some metal, such as manganese 
 or iron. But lately agates have been found 
 which seem to show true branches and leaves 
 of vegetables. 
 
 The name " chalcedony" is derived from the 
 city of Chalcedon, in Asia Minor, where this 
 form of flint was found in ancient times. The 
 best spectacle and opera glasses are of rock 
 crystal, which is the purest form of silica, so 
 transparent and so hard that they will bear 
 cutting into thin slices and polishing. They 
 
 12* 
 
138 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 not only magnify better than artificial glass, 
 but cannot be scratched so readily, while they 
 are cooler and more pleasant to the eye. 
 
 The uses of flints are very various : the white 
 flints, most abundant at Swanscombe, near 
 Gravesend, England, are ground for the best 
 china-ware and finest flint-glass. Before the 
 invention of lucifer matches and percussion- 
 caps, they were as indispensable to the house- 
 wife's tinder-box as to the sportsman's gun. 
 They are used, too, for some diseases of horses' 
 eyes. Most sands, and sandstones, consist so 
 entirely of silica that they ought to be classed 
 with flints, though sandstone is a hard rock 
 and fliuts are always in separate nodules. 
 Careful examination will show that common 
 sandstone consists of minute particles of silica 
 cemented by argillaceous or clayey earth. It 
 is soft at first, like the new red sandstone 
 rocks in Staffordshire, but in the lapse of 
 years it becomes extremely hard, forming 
 the free-stone used for paving and building. 
 These particles of silica are actually rolled 
 and rounded rock crystals, formed by the 
 slow breaking up and wearing away of granite 
 or other crystalline rocks of a more ancient 
 date. The Paris building-stone, the Caen 
 
SILICA. 139 
 
 stone, the Portland stone, the Pictou stone of 
 Nova Scotia, and the Norristown and Newark 
 red sandstones are instances of building-mate- 
 rial which hardens after use. 
 
 So many substances have silica mingling 
 with them in various proportions that it 
 must be regarded as one of the most im- 
 portant of earth's treasures, and is found 
 scattered everywhere. In fact, one-half of the 
 whole crust of the globe is made of it. It 
 enters into all rocks, and, of course, into all 
 soils. Many vegetables owe their strength to 
 the silica they imbibe from the earth. The 
 grasses especially require for their healthy 
 growth a large proportion of silica ; and it is 
 this substance which renders their slender 
 stalks so strong and stiff. This has been 
 shown by actual experiment; for a bead of 
 silex as transparent as glass has been extracted 
 from grass by a blow-pipe. Moreover, when 
 a stack of hay in a meadow, between Mannheim 
 and Heidelberg, in Germany, was set on fire 
 by lightning, and entirely consumed, the silex 
 which remained was found in a melted mass 
 upon the ground. It looked somewhat like 
 glass, and was at first supposed to be the pro- 
 duct of a meteor, but, when chemically tested, 
 
140 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 proved to be silica combined with potash, just 
 as it usually exists in grass. That substance 
 was in reality the ashes of the hay; and the 
 ashes of burned corn, sugarcane and bamboo, 
 all of which are varieties of grass, generally 
 consist principally of minute particles of flint. 
 Some reeds will strike fire; others are used 
 as rasps by artists, especially in finishing 
 plaster busts or ornaments. Some kinds of 
 polishing-powder are made up of the minute 
 sandy shields of microscopic animals. But 
 silica seldom exists in animals, and then only 
 in consequence of disease. 
 
 The best millstones are made from a rock 
 which is almost pure silica, called burrstone, 
 full of cavities or blisters, tinted with iron, 
 and exceeding hard. Finer kinds are used 
 for grindstones, and still finer for whetstones, 
 by glass-cutters and cutlers. Silicious or 
 flinty sand is used also for the beds in which 
 iron, brass and other metals are cast, equal- 
 izing the heat of the china-kiln or potter's oven. 
 The chemist uses it to make his sand-bath, 
 which heats slowly and retains a uniform 
 temperature for a long time. It will, how- 
 ever, melt entirely under very great heat, as 
 we find upon examining volcanic productions. 
 
IGNEOUS EOCKS. 141 
 
 Indeed, silica mingles largely with the basalt, 
 greenstone, hornblende, trap, granite and ser- 
 pentine of those rocks which are said to be 
 of igneous origin, that is, which were once 
 in the condition of boiling fluids, like the lava 
 of burning mountains. 
 
 Many of these igneous rocks much resemble 
 various modern volcanic productions. Though 
 the granite and basalt rocks do not exhibit 
 any evidences of cones and craters, like the 
 burning mountains of the present day, yet 
 veins of granite occur shooting upwards so 
 vertically through every stratum of rock in 
 various parts of the world, that volcanic erup- 
 tions alone seem to account for them. But 
 some of these rocks were perhaps made pasty 
 by water and a gentle heat, and slowly pressed 
 up through cracks by the weight of the rocks 
 above them. Such has been the case some- 
 times with limestone, and even with coal. As 
 the earth seems to be still gradually cooling, 
 the water of ancient times may have held 
 much more silica in solution than is common 
 now, as we only find it in hot springs, around 
 which it is deposited so constantly that petri- 
 factions abound around them, especially in 
 Iceland, where the Geysers are ornamented 
 
142 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 with mosses and grasses so incrusted witli 
 silica that the original vegetable has entirely 
 disappeared, leaving only its semblance in deli- 
 cate crystal, or frosted stone-work, looking 
 very beautiful. 
 
 Stems of a soft and succulent nature are 
 found preserved in flint ; and even the young 
 leaves of a palm-tree just about to shoot forth 
 have been discovered completely silicified. 
 The process is difficult to understand; but it 
 has occurred in innumerable instances, in all 
 ages of the world and in all kinds of rocks. 
 We may see at the glass-works how com- 
 pletely foreign substances can be enclosed in 
 melted matter, and then vitrified, as those 
 elegant French glass letter-weights enclose 
 bunches of artificial flowers, or the silver 
 crest is put into those pretty dessert-plates 
 we saw one day being made there. 
 
 The polishing-stone called Tripoli consists 
 almost entirely of silicious or flinty matter, 
 which has originated, as the microscope shows 
 us, from the shells or shields of animalculse 
 long since extinct. With a powerful magnifier, 
 many thousands of these shells are still dis- 
 tinguishable in a cubic inch of Tripoli. At a 
 meeting of the British Association, Professor 
 
SILEX. 143 
 
 Ehrenberg exhibited a large glass full of sili- 
 cious or flinty earth, which he had prepared 
 from animalculae now existing. 
 
 Silex is certainly the most abundant sub- 
 stance on our globe; for it is proved by 
 analysis to form two-thirds of all the mine- 
 rals yet examined, including some of the 
 hardest gems and softest clays. It is the 
 most plentiful ingredient of the oldest rocks, 
 but mingles also in various proportions with 
 the rocks of every age and every variety. 
 The felspars contain about one-half silica and 
 one-third alumina; and with the addition of 
 portions of lime, potash, soda, or oxide of iron, 
 they produce the beautiful crystalline sub- 
 stances with golden specks, known as sun- 
 stone, moonstone, and ice-spar.* 
 
 *" MUSICAL SAND." Hugh Miller tells us that he 
 observed that the loose Oolitic sand of the Bay of Laig, 
 in the Isle of Eigg, Hebrides, yields a sonorous sound 
 sometimes a musical note to the tread, especially when 
 pressed obliquely in the step. In its drier tracts this 
 sound is obvious only during calm weather at a distance 
 of twenty or thirty yards ; but where damp ground exists 
 beneath the surface, and the dry sand lies above, the tones 
 are louder and sharper. 
 
 Similar sounds have been observed for ages on Jebel 
 Nakous, or " the Mountain of the Bell," about three 
 
144 FLINT AND SAND. 
 
 Every one has noticed the musical sound 
 of wheels in the dry sands of the Jersey pines, 
 
 miles from the Gulf of Suez, " resembling the low tones 
 of an ^Eolian harp, and occasionally the striking of a 
 clock, or the notes produced by drawing moistened fin- 
 gers over glass, or even the rumbling of distant thunder," 
 when a large extent of this sand was agitated. 
 
 About forty miles north of Cabul, near the base of the 
 Hindoo Koosh Mountains, is the hill of Reg Rawan, or 
 " Moving Sand," which, when disturbed by people 
 sliding down it, emits sounds " resembling those issuing 
 from drums and nagarats," a phenomenon which at- 
 tracted the notice of the natives at a very early period. 
 Both Hindoos and Arabs have characteristic superstitions 
 to explain these curious facts ; but they still puzzle the 
 more scientific inquirers of the present day. The sands 
 of these three localities, in Scotland, Arabia and Cabul, 
 are similar, though not precisely identical, in compo- 
 sition. At the Bay of Laig, Hugh Miller perceived 
 "that the loudest sounds were elicited by drawing the 
 hand slowly through the incoherent mass in a segment of 
 a circle at the full stretch of the arm, and that the vibra- 
 tions which produce them communicate a peculiar titil- 
 lating sensation to the hand or foot by which they are 
 elicited, extending in the foot to the knee, and in the 
 hand to the elbow." In 1832, M. Seetzen, a German, 
 and Mr. Grey, of University College, Oxford, were the 
 only Europeans who had visited Jebel Nakous, the Moun- 
 tain of the Bell. Lieutenant Welsted, of the Indian 
 Navy, afterwards carefully explored the mountain, and 
 gave a fine lithograph of it in his Travels; and, in 
 
MUSICAL SANDS. 145 
 
 or the coarse white sands which cover the top 
 of the Broad Mountain in the anthracite coal- 
 region. 
 
 1837, Sir Alexander Barnes visited the Indian "Moving 
 Sand." 
 
 See "The Cruise of the Betsy," page 59; Sir J. Her- 
 schel's "Treatise on Sound;" "North British Review," 
 March 31, 1845. 
 
 In the United States such musical sand may be heard 
 and gathered at Tiverton, near Newport, in Rhode Island. 
 
1 46 GRAVEL. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 GRAVEL. 
 
 THE pretty, bright, yellow-coloured gravel, 
 which looks so cheerful and furnishes such 
 pretty paths in our gardens, is not to be found 
 everywhere; and therefore, when Edward 
 visited some friends at a distance, he was 
 much struck with its appearance, and, as 
 usual, brought home some specimens and 
 endeavoured to find out its origin and com- 
 position. Mr. Goodman noticed his studies; 
 but having early inculcated the maxim, " Read 
 and you will know/'* that his children might 
 exercise their own minds, he left him for a time 
 to his own researches among dictionaries and 
 encyclopedias, without making any remark. 
 
 Poor Edward, however, found that these 
 learned compilations did not solve many of 
 his inquiries: indeed, some of these works 
 
 * From the mother of the celebrated Sir William Jones. 
 
GBAVEL. I 147 
 
 were as entirely silent upon the word " gravel" 
 as if no such compound existed. At length 
 he sought his father's aid ; and, having spread 
 out his samples on the grotto-table, he called 
 his brothers and sisters to join them, and 
 related his unsuccessful efforts to obtain in- 
 formation for himself upon the subject. 
 
 Mr. Goodman told him that he had not 
 looked under the right head for information; 
 for that " gravel," though the common name, 
 is not a scientific appellation, and therefore 
 not used by the learned in technical works 
 upon mineralogy. They generally term it allu- 
 vium, diluvium, or detritus, though, as seen 
 in some large gravel-pits in Kent, England, it 
 was natural to suppose it to be a regular form 
 of rock. It is found collected into certain lo- 
 calities ; but, if examined, it will easily be per- 
 ceived that it consists of various sorts of stones 
 broken into fragments and then rounded by 
 continual rubbing together and rolling about. 
 When broken with the hammer, some of these 
 stones are exactly like flint inside, often yel- 
 low; others are white like quartz, or red like 
 cornelian, gray like slate, and even variegated 
 with stripes or spots like the agates of which 
 brooches are made. In fact, gravel is com- 
 
148 GRAVEL. 
 
 posed of rounded pieces of every sort of hard 
 rock over which the water flows which forms 
 the river in the bed of which it is found. If 
 two of the purest-looking white stones from a 
 gravel-pit be rubbed together very hard in 
 the dark, they will soon be seen to look almost 
 red-hot, while they emit a peculiar smell of 
 burning, and some degree of heat. These 
 stones are common amid shingle-beaches; and 
 children by the sea-side often pick them up 
 and amuse themselves by rubbing them to- 
 gether as " fire-stones/' from their aspect and 
 effluvium. Shingle generally has a gray 
 tint, and gravel a yellow hue; and though 
 the latter is found quite inland, and the former 
 on the coast, both have been rounded and de- 
 posited much in the same way, and both bear 
 the same general name of alluvium, from the 
 Latin word alluo, signifying to wash, indi- 
 cating the fact of its having been washed into 
 valleys or hollow basins by water afterwards 
 drained away, or evaporating into the atmo- 
 sphere. 
 
 GRAVEL evidently has originated from the 
 ruin of other rocks, caused by the action of the 
 atmosphere, or rain and frost, upon such rocks 
 as are or have been exposed to the effects of 
 
GRAVEL. 149 
 
 weather; for it is found chiefly on or near 
 the surface of the earth. Gravel-beds among 
 lower rocks most probably originated in the 
 same way, when such rocks were on what 
 was then the surface of the earth. In the 
 midland counties of England there are vast 
 accumulations of gravel, composed of frag- 
 ments of nearly every sort of rock existing in 
 the country. They are many fathoms deep in 
 some places, arid in others so heaped up as 
 to form decided hills. They are so extensive 
 that English geologists say that from Leicester 
 to Lutterworth the traveller passes for forty 
 miles over one continuous gravel-bed. All 
 round this region there are other large and 
 distinct gravel-beds, and many hills crowned 
 with it where other substances intervene. 
 But this is nothing to the great accumulations 
 of gravel in the northern regions of our coun- 
 try, especially in the central table-lands and 
 valleys of the Eocky Mountains, where the 
 emigrant trains wander for weeks over a 
 gravel desert formed from the mountain peaks 
 and ranges, which appear at intervals as if 
 thrust up through them from below. 
 
 The arctic regions are covered with gravel, 
 
 among which occur large boulders, or wander- 
 is* 
 
150 GRAVEL. 
 
 ing rocks, brought to their places by ancient 
 icebergs when the ocean was above the land. 
 And this "drift" gravel, or "diluvium," as 
 geologists call it, comes down to about the 
 latitude of 40 or 41 in the Northern United 
 States, covering even the highest parts of the 
 Green Mountains of Vermont to a depth of 
 one or two hundred feet. 
 
 Whole cabinets of rocks can be collected out 
 of the gravel. It is asserted by English 
 geologists that specimens of nearly a complete 
 series of British rocks might be obtained from 
 the gravel in the valley of Shipston-on-Stour, 
 near Market Harborough. Large boulders, 
 or round masses of granite, porphyry and 
 other materials, are found scattered over the 
 plains of Germany and Russia, so far from 
 their native mountain-beds that they must 
 have come across the Baltic when frozen fast 
 in the bottom of floating icebergs from the 
 glaciers of Norway and Sweden. Similar 
 rocks belonging to the Alps are found lying 
 on the sides of the Jura Mountains, having 
 come on ice-glaciers fifty miles across the 
 valley of Switzerland. 
 
 Besides these comparatively modern gravel- 
 beds, there are ancient beds of hardened 
 
GRAVEL. 151 
 
 gravel often forced up into nearly vertical 
 positions by some convulsion of nature : they 
 are called conglomerates, breccia, or pudding- 
 stone. In these the gravel is cemented by 
 some other substance, such as clay, silex or 
 lime. In pudding-stone the fragments are 
 round, and coloured much like the English 
 Christmas pudding. In breccia the fragments 
 are angular. The conglomerate under the 
 coal-measures is such an ancient gravel, but 
 probably made by the sea-waves upon an 
 ancient beach. 
 
 The gravel outside the' chalk-basin around 
 London consists principally of flints, from 
 which the chalk, as the lighter substance, was 
 carried away in the subsidence of the waters. 
 The gravel-beds of Philadelphia consist of the 
 rounded ruins of the rocks of Chestnut Hill, 
 Fairmount and Gray's Ferry. Under the 
 microscope it is plainly seen that sand con- 
 sists of flinty materials broken up into still 
 smaller fragments. Sometimes one material 
 predominates, or some metallic oxide mixes 
 with it, producing the various-coloured sands 
 of which cliffs, such as those at Fall Eiver, 
 Providence and other New England places, 
 
152 GEAVEL. 
 
 are composed. Flint sand is valued for its 
 vitrifying or glazing qualities. 
 
 Sand lines the shores and forms the beds of 
 most rivers, from the gradual accumulation 
 of alluvial deposit from the land through 
 which they pass. The river-floods carry a 
 great deal out at their mouths to the sea, so 
 as by degrees to extend the shores. Thus, in 
 the Lake of Geneva the Rhone has formed a 
 delta two miles long and nine hundred feet 
 thick, during the last eight hundred years ; 
 and another delta has been formed by the 
 same river on the shores of the Mediterranean 
 Sea, which has now become a solid limestone 
 rock. 
 
 Alice asked what the delta of a river was. 
 
 Mr. Goodman explained that the heap of 
 sand, mud or gravel which gradually accu- 
 mulates at its mouth sometimes takes a three- 
 cornered shape, resembling the Greek letter 
 delta, (J,) and is thence called by its name. 
 The formation of a delta at the mouth of any 
 tiny rivulet which flows into a stagnant pool 
 may be watched, and many interesting facts 
 in physical geography may be learned from 
 such an amusement. The delta of the Missis- 
 sippi has advanced several leagues since the 
 
DELTAS. 153 
 
 city of New Orleans was built at the mouth 
 of the river, and, not having had time to drain, 
 or dry by evaporation, it is still the " dismal 
 swamp." During two thousand years the 
 land has gained at the mouth of the river Po 
 eighteen miles, extending also on either side 
 one hundred miles along the coast. 
 
 History mentions the condition of many 
 rivers at different periods, and modern science 
 can judge of the Mississippi by examining the 
 locality, the evidence of fresh deposits is so 
 clear. Thus, the delta of the Ganges begins 
 two hundred and twenty miles away from the 
 sea, while the waters of the ocean are made 
 muddy by the matter carried out for sixty 
 miles from the shore. The delta of the Niger 
 extends so far every way as to form an area 
 of twenty-five thousand square miles. The 
 immense alluvium still depositing by the 
 rivers Amazon and Orinoco is chiefly swept 
 away by the Gulf Stream in a northerly direc- 
 tion. The waters of the Amazon show this 
 so distinctly that they can be distinguished 
 from the ocean three hundred miles from the 
 coast. 
 
 The quantity of sediment brought down by 
 the river Ganges every year amounts to more 
 
154 GRAVEL. 
 
 than six thousand millions of tons, sixty 
 times the estimated weight of the great pyramid 
 of Egypt. This at first sight appears impos- 
 sible : yet it will be credible on considering 
 the very careful experiments that were made 
 to ascertain how much solid matter was car- 
 ried past one city by a single river in a year. 
 By careful watching for a fixed period, Dr. 
 Dana found that the river Merrimack, in 
 Massachusetts, carried past the city of Lowell, 
 in the year 1838, so much, that if all the sedi- 
 ment had been anthracite coal, such as is 
 used in the Lowell print-works, there would 
 have been an annual supply of five thousand 
 tons for one hundred and ninety-seven years. 
 The Ganges is a much larger river, possessing 
 many mouths: so that, if one river carried 
 down so much past a single point, it is not 
 surprising that the Ganges should deposit at 
 its mouth a much greater quantity. This 
 amazing amount of sediment, or alluvium, to 
 be exact, finds its way into these rivers by 
 means of heat, cold, and water in its various 
 conditions of fluid, ice and steam, all helping 
 the process of breaking up soil and rock, 
 sometimes acting separately, sometimes con- 
 jointly. Thus, the heat of the sun continually 
 
ALLUVIUM. 155 
 
 crumbles up the surface of the earth. The 
 most casual observer must have noticed how 
 the soil dries to powder in the sunshine during 
 very warm weather; and we read of the same 
 effect in Iceland from the heat under ground 
 near Mount Hecla. 
 
 When rain comes 7 this powder is easily 
 washed down into the mountain-streams, 
 which, rushing along some steep descent, wear 
 away harder rocks. The same thing is ac- 
 complished by " ice-freshets." It is impos- 
 sible for any one who has not witnessed the 
 breaking up of one of these frozen streams 
 in the spring when for many miles the 
 whole channel becomes literally choked with 
 ice to form an adequate idea of the im- 
 mense excavating force it exerts, scooping out 
 huge caves, and whirling round hollows, so 
 that the approach of such a laden torrent is 
 justly dreaded both by man and beast. It 
 must be remembered that most rocks lose 
 one-third of their weight in water, and when 
 ice is frozen round them they are easily 
 moved. 
 
 Water is a powerful agent in producing 
 gravel and sand, as it acts upon hard rocks 
 both chemically and mechanically. Chemi- 
 
156 GBAVEL. 
 
 cally, it dissolves some of the substances they 
 contain and renders the mass loose and porous ; 
 mechanically, it gets between the particles and 
 forces them asunder, so that they are more 
 easily worn away by any current passing over 
 them. Then, as water expands in freezing, 
 frosts still more effectually separate the frag- 
 ments, till year after year this gradually pre- 
 pares abundant material for torrents to carry 
 off to the gravel-bed, or for land-slips. 
 
 At Dover the chalk cliffs are perpetually 
 giving way, from the sea undermining them 
 below, or the frost detaching large masses 
 from above, which occasionally do much 
 damage in their fall. Two ladies, on one oc- 
 casion, had been quietly resting in a large 
 cave only one-quarter of an hour before it was 
 filled up by a mass of many tons' weight, 
 which fell with a noise resembling distant 
 thunder. Their father had heard the noise, 
 and, knowing their habits, went to seek them ; 
 and they all returned to the scene of devasta- 
 tion, feeling deep gratitude to God, who had 
 preserved them from a danger that they had 
 not contemplated. Truly, we may rejoice 
 that "he is ever about our paths." In the 
 churchyard of the same town, a tombstone still 
 
GLACIERS. 157 
 
 tells of a whole family killed by a mass of chalk 
 cliff, which crushed the house and filled up the 
 garden, like the avalanches we read of in the 
 Alps, composed of snow mixed with detached 
 earth and stones and ice. They are often 
 much larger than our land-slips, so as to bury 
 several villages and thousands of people in a 
 moment. The glaciers are rivers of ice rest- 
 ing in the higher valleys of mountain regions 
 and slowly flowing down towards the lower 
 valleys, where they continually melt and a 
 river of cold water flows from a cavern at the 
 end, while all the rocks which have fallen 
 from the mountain-sides upon the ice in the 
 bed of the valley are carried down upon its 
 back and tumbled off, one by one, at its end, 
 forming piles of rubbish, sometimes hundreds 
 of feet high, called " terminal moraines." As 
 the ice-river slowly moves along around the 
 points of the mountain-sides, it cracks and 
 gapes in hideous crevasses, down which the 
 stories fall ; but, as the surface of the glacier 
 is always melting, these stones re-appear a 
 mile or two farther on. As they protect the 
 ice with their shadow, they are soon mounted 
 on pedestals of ice, which get so high at last 
 that they melt through and the stone falls 
 
 14 
 
158 GRAVEL. 
 
 down again. Thus these rocks are forever 
 falling into the cracks of the ice and mounting 
 on pedestals of ice, until, after many years, they 
 get to the end of their journey, and tumble over 
 the edge of the glacier into the valley below. 
 At the bottom and sides of the glacier, frag- 
 ments of rock and pebbles frozen into it pro- 
 duce the effects of a huge rasp, crushing and 
 grinding every thing over which it passes, 
 and scratching the harder rocks in every 
 direction, as travellers may easily perceive. 
 The glaciers of Viesch, Aletsch and others in 
 the Alps, are full of fragments of rock which 
 are perpetually preparing gravel. 
 
 From all these causes it may be easily un- 
 derstood how sand and gravel come on the 
 land and the sea-beach, and, when it is car- 
 ried out to sea ; how in time it fills up parts 
 of the ocean and forms new land. Accord- 
 ingly, we find this is the case not only at the 
 mouths of rivers, but on coasts where the 
 wind blows chiefly on shore or where currents 
 set one way. The waves wash up immense 
 quantities of sand and gravel, so as to fill up 
 harbours or raise a bar across them. The 
 waves, in a single storm, are sometimes so 
 powerful as to wash up large boulders, which 
 
DOWNS. 159 
 
 lie in a row on the shore. These form 
 rather a protection against future storms, 
 as we are told in the Bible that God him- 
 self " placed the sand for the bound of the 
 sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass 
 it: and though the waves thereof toss them- 
 selves, yet can they not prevail; though they 
 roar, yet can they not pass over it." (Jer. v. 
 22.) Extraordinary tides often carry sand 
 and gravel too high on the beach to be reached 
 by the usual tides : this leaves time for the 
 sand to dry, and, being carried inland by 
 every favourable sea-breeze, land-winds being 
 too feeble to send it back again, the sand falls, 
 and gradually becomes a formidable enemy, 
 overwhelming fertile fields, filling up rivers 
 and burying villages. Hence the dunes, or 
 downs, common in every part of the world, 
 and of which we will speak again by-and-by. 
 In Michigan there are ranges of sand-hills 
 along the shores of the great lakes from one 
 to two hundred feet in height. The sands of 
 the Libyan Desert, driven by the west wind, 
 have encroached upon the valley of the Nile 
 so as to cover over the ancient cities of Egypt 
 and half bury up the greatest temples that 
 men have ever erected. Belzoni and the 
 
160 GRAVEL. 
 
 French, English and Prussian savans who fol- 
 lowed him in his explorations, have un- 
 covered a multitude of temples, rock tombs 
 and statues from the sand, which has pro- 
 tected these remains of a remote antiquity 
 from destruction, and thus enabled us to 
 read the history of the oldest civilization the 
 world has ever seen. The whole west side of 
 the Nile has been rendered one vast, barren 
 waste, except in a few sheltered spots known 
 as oases. That these wastes were once popu- 
 lous is evident from the numerous remains of 
 ancient temples, palaces, cities and villages 
 still to be found there. Light as the sand- 
 grains are, each by itself and carried by the 
 wind, yet so heavy do they weigh when all 
 combined that their accumulation has proved 
 an effectual weapon of God's wrath in burying 
 the rebellious cities of Babylon, Nineveh and 
 others, whose very names would be lost but 
 for their record in the roll of the prophet, 
 whose messages of mercy to the penitent were 
 despised and laughed at in the days of pros- 
 perity. As a foundation it is so unstable 
 that our Lord compares the careless hearer 
 of his word to a foolish man building his 
 house upon the sand, resting his soul for 
 
COLUMN OF SLAG AT VESUVIUS. 
 
 Opp. p. 161. 
 
. SHOALS. 161 
 
 peace, perhaps, on temporal prosperity. But 
 when the rain of God's wrath descends, and 
 the wind of his scrutiny blows, and beats upon 
 the house to try its security, it falls, and great 
 must be its fall. 
 
 In the waters of the sea the sand and gravel 
 obey the direction of the currents and tides. 
 The Gulf Stream, sweeping along the Atlantic 
 coast from between Cuba and Florida past Cape 
 Hatteras, in Virginia, and Cape Cod, in Mas- 
 sachusetts, turns all the sand-bars which form 
 at the mouths of our rivers and at the ends 
 of GUI' bays into hooks, towards the north, 
 such as Paulus Hook and Marcus Hook, 
 and Cape Cod itself, the end of which, as you 
 can see upon the map, curls round upon the 
 harbour of Hingham like the end of the suck- 
 ing-tube or proboscis of a butterfly. The 
 tides, rushing every day twice to- and fro 
 along the coast and among the islands, arrange 
 the larger gravel and cobble stones in lines 
 or ridges at the bottom of the sea for some 
 miles' distance out, forming shoals. In Mas- 
 sachusetts, as in other parts of the world, 
 such long and regular hills of gravel, called 
 " osars" in Sweden, are seen upon the dry 
 land back from the coast. This is one of the 
 
 L 14* 
 
162 GRAVEL. 
 
 proofs we have that the land has risen out of 
 the sea in former times. 
 
 The struggle between the sand of the sea 
 and the cultivated fields of the farmer goes 
 on everywhere. The people who live along 
 Cape God have their farms 'continually strewn 
 with sand. In England, there is a part of 
 the Channel off the coast of Kent called the 
 Downs, a roadstead quite in the sea ; and these 
 Downs were formerly land, overwhelmed first 
 by sand, and now by sea. The Goodwin Sands, 
 lying outside or eastward of the Downs, were 
 actually part of Earl Godwin's landed estates 
 within a comparatively recent period, and are 
 still dry at every low tide. 
 
 All around the Bay of Biscay a similar 
 encroachment is going on. Numbers of vil- 
 lages have already been destroyed, and towns 
 are now threatened by sand-hills moving 
 towards them at the rate of sixty or seventy 
 feet annually. In Cornwall, the church and 
 village of Piran Zabuloe were buried so long 
 ago as to have left no records but the ruins 
 of the church itself and the traditions pre- 
 served in the neighbourhood. 
 
 These gradual deposits of sand often alter 
 the course of rivers : thus, in the short space 
 
BARS. 163 
 
 of eleven years, the head of the river Jellinghi, 
 in India, was removed three-quarters of a mile 
 farther down. The junction of the river 
 Cosa (as large as the Rhine) with the Ganges 
 has been moved forty -five miles. 
 
 The waves of the sea must be very power- 
 ful ; for the bar of shingle at Dover Harbour 
 comes back every tide, notwithstanding all 
 the pains that are taken to wash it away by 
 sluices. On this account an officer is always 
 appointed to watch the mouth of the harbour, 
 and guide vessels in, as the shape and direction, 
 as well as the height, of the bar, are perpetually 
 changing. The waves of the ocean are irre- 
 sistible when driven by a furious wind. The 
 granite blocks built into the foundations of the 
 breakwater at Cape Henlopen, at the mouth 
 of Delaware Bay, were tossed about during a 
 great storm in the wildest disorder. And 
 when the Plymouth Breakwater, in England, 
 was being constructed, some heavy gales oc- 
 curred, during which huge blocks of granite 
 and limestone, weighing from two to five tons 
 each, were washed about like pebbles. Three 
 kundred such were borne a distance of two 
 hundred feet, and even up the inclined plane 
 of the breakwater. Some were carried quite 
 
164 GEAVEL. 
 
 over it, and scattered in all directions ; and 
 one block, weighing seven tons, was carried 
 one hundred and fifty feet: so that it is no 
 wonder that sand and gravel should be carried 
 about by the wind and waves together. 
 
 The changes made by floods of the present 
 day on the surface of the land suggest that 
 many of the peculiarities of different coun- 
 tries have had a similar origin. For example, 
 accumulations of drift, found in many hilly 
 regions far from the sea, consist of sand, 
 gravel, and even large masses or boulders 
 brought some distance from the gravel-pits, 
 and sand-hills, or rocky mountains to which 
 they belong. Boulders seem to have drifted 
 from the north several hundred miles in a 
 southerly direction, and to have been carried 
 beyond mountains one or two thousand feet 
 high, as in Massachusetts, Maine and Nova 
 Scotia. There are boulders which have been 
 torn from the Green Mountains of Ver- 
 mont, now lying high up upon the flanks of 
 the White Mountains of New Hampshire. 
 Each of the mountain-ridges of New England 
 furnishes boulders for the country to the soutlv- 
 east of it. In Eastern New York there are 
 trains of boulders running in nearly straight 
 
BOULDERS. 165 
 
 lines across valleys of limestone from notches 
 in the sandstone mountains to ' the west of 
 them ; and some geologists suppose these notches 
 to have been made by great icebergs, and these 
 trains of boulders by great eddies or whirlpools 
 behind them. On the Highlands west of the 
 Hudson, in Orange county, great boulders of 
 gneiss are to be seen laid, as if by the hands 
 of man, upon smaller stones of limestone full 
 of shells, which must have come up from the 
 valleys lying to the north. How this delicate 
 operation has been performed is one of the 
 secrets of nature. 
 
 In Europe, the Netherlands, Denmark, the 
 plains of Germany, Poland ana Eussia, are 
 strewed over with boulders and pebbles, which 
 can be traced to their parent rocks in Sweden, 
 Lapland and Finland, in which countries they 
 are still more numerous. To reach these 
 localities they must have crossed the region 
 now occupied by the Baltic Sea. Wherever 
 there are boulders it is observed that they de- 
 crease in quantity as the distance from their 
 former homes increases. Near Beyrout, in 
 Syria, at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, 
 in India, and near Mount Atlas, in Africa, 
 similar boulders are observed, which have 
 
166 GRAVEL. 
 
 somehow or other wandered from their native 
 regions, just as the drift-wood from warmer 
 countries is now carried to the shores of the 
 arctic regions by ocean-currents, for the 
 benefit of the Esquimaux, who could other- 
 wise procure no wood. The largest propor- 
 tion of the Northern hemisphere is covered 
 with a crust of sand, gravel and boulders vary- 
 ing in thickness from a few inches to two hun- 
 dred feet ; and scarcely any mountains are en- 
 tirely free from this geological drift : sometimes 
 very large blocks are poised upon their summits. 
 In Switzerland, some of the largest blocks 
 which have crossed from the Alps over to the 
 Jura lie curiously poised upon peaks. This was 
 accounted for on the supposition that they had 
 been placed there by men ; but a different cause 
 has been suggested, which supposes them to 
 Lave come over upon the surface of ice ; and a 
 learned geologist has explained how the sun's 
 rays would heat the rock of the peak, and melt 
 a funnel through the ice above it, down into the 
 centre of which would slide any boulder which 
 happened to be near enough upon the ice, and 
 would, of course, settle precisely upon the peak. 
 In New England, all the surface-rocks which 
 peep above the soil and the covering of drift are 
 
BOULDERS. 167 
 
 rounded, polished and scratched by the boulders 
 when they were moving to their present places. 
 These boulders are of every size. The word 
 signifies a large round stone that could be 
 bowled along by a sufficient force ; and there- 
 fore a fixed rock ought not to be so called. 
 Boulders differ in weight: the one used as a 
 pedestal for the equestrian statue of Peter the 
 Great at Petersburgh weighs fifteen hundred 
 tons, but weighed much more before the artist 
 had the bad taste to cut it down from its ori- 
 ginal native form to an artificial shape, which he 
 thought finer, but which has in fact destroyed 
 much of its sublimity. It was brought over 
 marshes nearly a hundred miles, on cannon- 
 balls for wheels, over a road made expressly 
 for the occasion, and reminds us of the 
 moving, in ancient days, of those great obe- 
 lisks and statues of one stone from the Egyp- 
 tian quarries, to the cities along the Nile. 
 Some boulders are called rocking stones, when, 
 as seems most probable, streams of water have 
 removed the sand and gravel which accom- 
 panied them, and they remain poised so evenly 
 upon a single point that the slightest touch 
 will set them rocking. Such are termed, in 
 England, logging or Logan stones, and are 
 
168 GEAVEL. 
 
 not uncommon in Cornwall ; and very large 
 ones are found in Massachusetts. Another 
 name for them in the south of England is 
 Ambrose stones; and in that and many other 
 countries ignorant people say that they were 
 giants, turned into rocks for their wicked- 
 ness. Stories of this kind are common as far 
 east as Persia. 
 
 Sand and gravel are more frequently found 
 in valleys. This would be expected, from their 
 being produced by water wearing away rocks 
 and then carrying the detached pieces to 
 their destination by storms or torrents; and 
 so it is really found to be. In the valleys of 
 the Alps, and especially near the gorges, de- 
 files, or openings from one valley into another, 
 sand and gravel accumulate into mounds and 
 ridges, straight, curved and crooked, called 
 moraines, as I have explained before. But in 
 the true drift we see successive strata, or layers, 
 of sand, gravel and clay, as if floods had oc- 
 curred at different times, each leaving sedi- 
 ment behind it. Occasionally, beds of gravel 
 are found resting upon successive beds of lava, 
 each exhibiting evidence of a different and 
 older age than those above it; and in such 
 cases the gravel consists partly of fragments of 
 
GKAVEL. 169 
 
 lava torn from the beds below. Such "volcanic 
 breccias/' as they are called, are common in 
 Auvergne, in Central France. Among the old- 
 est rocks are similar conglomerates and brec- 
 cias, proving that the same laws of destruction 
 and re-formation have always operated which 
 we see performing all these wonders in our 
 own day. And the most gigantic marks 
 of destruction show the goodness of God; for 
 thus the earth has been prepared for the use 
 and happiness of man. It is this universal 
 tearing to pieces of the rocks, and distribution 
 of their sand and clay in loams of all kind, 
 that has made most of the earth's surface so 
 fertile. The hard surfaces of marble, granite 
 and flint are perfectly barren till the surface 
 is broken up or mouldered by the atmo- 
 sphere sufficiently to hold moisture. The 
 very fertile spots are generally where one 
 soil joins another,, so as to mingle together. 
 And the most fertile of all are where all the 
 ingredients of all the rocks are combined, in 
 the rich bottom-lands of modern river-valleys, 
 or in the black soil of the steppes of Southern 
 Russia, the pampas of South America or the 
 prairies of our West. 
 
 15 
 
170 CHALK. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHALK CORAL MAGNESIA ASBESTOS 
 MOULD. 
 
 THERE is no true chalk in America, al- 
 though we have the so-called " cretaceous" 
 or chalk formation all along the Atlantic sea- 
 board and on both sides of the Eocky Moun- 
 tains. So, when the subject of the nature of 
 chalk was broached, in one of their conversa- 
 tions in the grotto, by Edward, as he stood 
 scraping a piece with his knife and catching 
 the soft, white powder on a newspaper, while 
 he picked out small specks of flint or crystals 
 of silex from it now and then, and wondered 
 how they came there, he called upon his 
 uncle to explain. For, like most things with 
 which we are familiar from infancy, chalk had 
 never excited Edward's attention, till, when 
 old enough to travel, he had observed its 
 absence from the rocks which he was accus- 
 tomed to see and examine in his daily walks. 
 
CHALK:. 171 
 
 He began, therefore, to examine it more par- 
 ticularly, and to try various experiments with 
 the largest blocks of it he could get, in moulding 
 and cutting it into shape, but soon found it was 
 too soft for such purposes. He marvelled 
 that, with all the pains he took, his little 
 chalk bridges and houses were washed away 
 by the rain, or crumbled and were blown 
 away during hot weather and high winds. 
 He had heard his uncle say that, in the parts 
 of England and France where chalk is the 
 common rock and forms the soil of the coun- 
 try, the roads look as white as if covered 
 with snow, while the short grass on the hills 
 appears powdered with flour. In winter the 
 mud is white, and in summer the dust wears 
 the same hue, which nevertheless soils all 
 coloured dress and furniture as much as dirtier 
 substances would. Huge masses are detached 
 from the cliffs whenever heavy rains or long 
 frosts prevail, while chalk-pits abound in the 
 neighbourhood for supplying the demands of 
 commerce. He wondered how these chalk 
 cliffs and hills could have stood for so many 
 ages, and that the fortifications of cities 
 Dover, for example could be built of chalk, 
 and stand in spite of rain and wind. 
 
172 CHALK. 
 
 " No," said his uncle : "you are wrong there. 
 For these cliffs do not stand firmly when ex- 
 posed to the influence of weather. It may be 
 seen how perpetually they are giving way, 
 and changing their shape by the fall of large 
 masses: it is only where protected by the 
 intertwining fibres of short, grassy turf that 
 chalk seems to hold together at all; and the 
 outside chalk of the fortifications is protected 
 in the same manner. The fortifications them- 
 selves consist really of solid masonry, which is 
 only covered with chalk to break, as with a 
 soft cushion, the force of cannon-balls." 
 
 "But what is the material of chalk?" asked 
 Edward; "and is it an old rock?" For he 
 had come to know that in the geology of the 
 earth there was a great difference in the age 
 of the rocks. 
 
 "Chalk," replied his father, "has received 
 much attention from geologists, differing as it 
 does so much from most rocks. Chemically, 
 it consists of carbonate of lime, or a mixture 
 of the metal calcium, the gas oxygen, and 
 the same substance which forms charcoal, 
 carbon. It is considered to be one of the 
 newest or most recently-deposited rocks, 
 older than the tertiary and drift, of which we 
 
CHAL2. 173 
 
 spoke in the last chapter, but much later than 
 the coal-formation. To speak very accurately, 
 chalk, with its attendant strata, occupies a 
 space between the clay, sand and gravel of 
 the tertiary strata and the series of strata 
 called oolites. It abounds with fossil organic 
 remains of marine plants and animals, as well 
 as the flints already noticed, in regular lines. 
 Iron pyrites seem to be its only metal. It 
 has a whole world of fossil animals of its 
 own. Considered as a rock, it has been 
 deposited in lakes, or small seas, or estua- 
 ries running up from the ocean, which have 
 been thus filled up and are now lifted above 
 the sea-level and form dry land. Such is the 
 great chalk-basin of Northern France and 
 Southern England, cut in two by the Straits 
 of Dover. Here the chalk is best known and 
 has been most closely studied. But it occurs 
 in Spain and other parts of the south and east 
 of Europe, in Sweden, Poland and Eussia, in 
 the island of Crete, where it got its ancient 
 Latin name of Creta, and in Mount Lebanon 
 in Palestine. In South America there is a 
 quantity of fine white marl in some respects 
 resembling the lower chalk-formation, by 
 which phrase is meant the strata or beds of 
 
 15* 
 
174 CHALK. 
 
 material which lie lowest, and are generally 
 harder and more compact than the upper 
 portion. It has also been found in the western 
 parts of the United States. In England, where 
 it is cut through by the Channel, its long 
 white cliffs are supposed to have suggested to 
 the Romans the name which they gave that 
 island, Albion, from albus, white ; and it is 
 said that in the ancient religious books of the 
 Hindoos -an island is mentioned as the white 
 island, the island of the blessed." Some have 
 thought that the same island is meant. 
 
 In common language, chalk is called an 
 earth, and its origin for a long time puzzled 
 inquirers; but the microscope has led to the 
 interesting discovery that it consists for the 
 most part of the decomposed shells of multi- 
 tudes of insects, so small as to be invisible 
 to the naked eye. More than ten millions of 
 perfect forms have been observed in a single 
 pound of chalk, besides innumerable frag- 
 ments. 
 
 Edward remarked that that seemed almost 
 like the product of the coral- workers. Mr. 
 Goodman explained that chalk is made up 
 chiefly of minute separate shells, while coral 
 is the secretion of continuous stony matter for 
 
CHALK. 175 
 
 the habitations of the insects. Chemically, 
 the particles of chalk and coral are differently 
 combined. The shells of nearly four hundred 
 different varieties of insects now living have 
 been already distinguished in the pure white 
 chalk which abounds in England, many of 
 which are identical with those observed in the 
 coral shores of the Red Sea. In chalk-mar^ 
 and coarse chalk, numbers of these shells are 
 quite perfect, and can be separated, by soak- 
 ing the chalk in water, sufficiently to show 
 them under a powerful microscope; but the 
 finer the chalk is the more are the shells 
 broken and decomposed, till, in the best close 
 writing-chalk, comparatively few are whole. 
 
 When chalk is put into water, it seems at 
 first to melt and make the water milky, and 
 some portion of the most dusty, decayed mass 
 does no doubt combine with the water; but it 
 generally settles as a sediment ; and by brush- 
 ing a piece of chalk under water, Professor 
 Ehrenberg easily secured many specimens 
 both of the bryozoa, or moss animals, and the 
 polythalmia, or many-celled infusoria, which 
 he found still living in the waters of Cux- 
 haven. 
 
 Some chalk looks so regularly grained that, 
 
176 CHALK. 
 
 without minute investigation, we should almost 
 fancy it was crystallized; and perhaps it is 
 nearly so: at least, the decomposed particles 
 of shell are ranged in regular order and even- 
 looking laminae, though not quite so tho- 
 roughly united as they would have been if 
 they had been crystallized in the manner of 
 glass or rock-salt. It is rather curious that 
 the chalk-beds of the south of Europe exhibit 
 more well-preserved chalk animalcula and 
 less of the crystallized-looking laminae or 
 grains, while in the north and east of Europe 
 the chalk has more laminae and fewer perfect 
 remains. There is a remarkable difference 
 also in the presence or absence of flints in 
 chalk. In the south of Europe they are quite 
 absent, and instead there are beds of marl 
 composed entirely of the siliceous or flinty 
 shells of infusoria. 
 
 It seerns surprising to think of such pretty 
 white chalk cliffs being made of old shells ; but 
 yet it may be noticed that shells powder into 
 a very white, chalky sort of dust; and some 
 people content themselves with the thought 
 that this is because they are partly made of 
 chalk. Chalk, however, properly so called, 
 seems to have been the result of some animal 
 
CHALK. 177 
 
 process during the little creature's lifetime, or 
 the action of carbonic acid derived from the 
 atmosphere; and it certainly may be called 
 "the dust of death/' as truly as the black 
 animal mould discovered elsewhere with fossil 
 remains of larger size. The varieties of chalk 
 seem also in some measure to depend on the 
 sort of animalcula which most predominated. 
 There seems no reason to doubt that chalk 
 is still forming, as multitudes of the little crea- 
 tures are perpetually dying, and leaving their 
 tiny shields for the production of this white 
 substance. In the finest whiting, and even on 
 the smooth coating of white-washed walls and 
 glazed paper and visiting-cards, these little 
 moss-like coral animalcula-shells may be dis- 
 covered by the aid of a magnifying-glass of 
 sufficient power. Indeed, the saying of the 
 ancient naturalists, that "all chalk is formed 
 by worms," which for a long season was con- 
 demned as absurd, is far more correct than 
 most of the theories which were substituted 
 for it. How they came to that conclusion is 
 wonderful; as we have not learned that they 
 possessed any thing like our modern and con- 
 venient microscopes. They either must have 
 had very good eyes and used them diligently, 
 
 M 
 
178 CHALK. 
 
 or possibly they had contrived magnifiers of 
 some description, though no specimen or re- 
 cord of them has descended to us. 
 
 " We have several varieties of coral, father/' 
 said Alice, spreading her necklace and brace- 
 lets on the table and opening a drawer of 
 elegant little specimens. " Do you mean to 
 say that it consists of the same materials as 
 this smooth, white chalk?" 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that chalk and white 
 coral can be calcined into lime, so nearly 
 
 B Natural 
 size. 
 
 Magnified 
 
 Section of Nummulite, Pyrenees. Spiralina, Paris Chalk. 
 
 alike that we could not easily detect any dif- 
 ference, both being nearly pure carbonate of 
 lime. Chalk abounds more in the temperate 
 and northern regions, while coral' is rarely 
 formed except in tropical climates. Chalk 
 seems a deposit left by waters receding or 
 drying up; while coral is never produced 
 
CORAL ISLAND. 
 
 179 
 
 except under water, the insect invariably 
 stopping his labours when reaching the sur- 
 face. By degrees they have formed in the 
 Pacific Ocean especially vast barriers and 
 reefs ; from fifty to one hundred feet thick, and 
 
 Coral Island in South Seas. 
 
 extending from a few miles in some spots to 
 hundreds of leagues in others. Many of the 
 South Sea Islands appear to have been ori- 
 ginally formed of coral-rock, on which soil 
 has gradually gathered and vegetation ad- 
 
180 CHALK. 
 
 vanced, till they have been prepared for the 
 sustenance and residence of human beings. 
 Disappointment Islands and Duff's Group are 
 connected by five hundred miles of coral- 
 reef, over which the natives can travel from 
 one to another. Between New Holland and 
 New Guinea is a line of coral-reef seven 
 hundred miles long, in no place interrupted 
 by channels wider than thirty miles; while 
 the Maldives are a chain of coral-islets four 
 hundred and eighty geographical miles long. 
 These are the summits of long ranges of 
 sunken mountains, around the peaks of which 
 the coral-animals began to build their reefs, 
 and have continued *to build, though the 
 peaks have sunk beneath the level of the sea. 
 Professor Dana, of New Haven, shows how 
 the movements of the earth's crust have ac- 
 complished this result. And he points out 
 long belts of surface on the Pacific side of the 
 globe, which, instead of sinking, are rising 
 into the air; and along these the coral-reefs 
 have been carried up hundreds of feet upon 
 the sides of the mountains which line the 
 coast. Such, for instance, is the case with 
 the eastern coast of New Holland, where the 
 coral-reef is in some places four hundred feet 
 
CORAL REEFS. 181 
 
 t 
 
 above the level of the sea. This need not 
 surprise us, when, -fey turning to other parts 
 of the globe, we may see Greenland, for ex- 
 ample, slowly sinking, and Sweden slowly 
 rising from the ocean at the rate of one and 
 a half or two feet in a century. The west 
 coast of South America is also rising. 
 
 It is astonishing that insects should make 
 such extensive works ; but these industrious 
 and persevering coral-insects appear to have 
 existed from all ages : and when we remem- 
 ber that five hundred millions of the chalk- 
 insects can find room to sport in a single drop 
 of water, (according to Ehrenberg's state- 
 ment,) and that each one can multiply to one 
 hundred and seventy billions in four days 
 only, the wonder seems somewhat less incom- 
 prehensible. 
 
 It is not known how long the coral-ani- 
 mals live and work, nor exactly at what 
 rate the growth of the coral-reefs goes on: 
 Many and very inconsistent estimates have been 
 made, amounting to little more than conjec- 
 tures ; and, in fact, it depends on the kind of 
 coral-animal of which the question is asked, for 
 some grow faster than others. The increase of 
 coral has not yet been much watched ; but we 
 
 16 ' 
 
182 CHALK. 
 
 can form some idea of its progress from the his- 
 tory of a ship sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during 
 a heavy storm. It was laden with silver ; and, 
 thirty years afterwards, divers were employed 
 to try and recover some of the treasure; but 
 great difficulty was experienced in getting to 
 the ship, from the quantity of coral which in 
 that time had overgrown it. Sir Hans 
 Sloane tells us that the ship's timber, the iron 
 and money, were all concreted by the growth 
 of a calcareous or limestone matter. 
 
 Wherever the bottom of the ocean is settling 
 down and carrying out of sight the mountain- 
 summits, there the coral-reefs are ranged in a 
 circular manner, with a lagoon, or shallow 
 lake, in the middle; and on the leeward side 
 is a single opening, through which the tides 
 set, or the extra water, which in high storms 
 is dashed over the windward portion of the 
 reef into the inuer lake, is allowed to run 
 out again. Along the reef runs a narrow 
 grove of cocoanut or bread-fruit trees, on 
 which the inhabitants, if any there be, sub- 
 sist. And along the edge, just under the 
 water; is an abundance of elegant varieties of 
 coral, whose form and colours rival those of 
 the most beautiful flowers; while among 
 
COEAL. 183 
 
 these stony groves float or dart a million bril- 
 liant fish, feeding upon the food they find 
 upon the branching coral. This is of every 
 shade of colour, black, red, pink, green, 
 white and yellow; and as to shape, some are 
 branched like trees, others are pipe-like and 
 fan-shaped. Masses of cabbage-leaf coral are 
 as large as a gooseberry-bush. Some rise 
 like tall grass or hang over like delicate 
 feathers. Each variety of coral-insect builds 
 a different-shaped house or body for itself; 
 and one generation grows, like moss, upon the 
 dead layer of the generation which preceded it. 
 The most violent storms have no effect upon 
 the living coral, which flourishes best upon 
 the windward side, but only dash up on the 
 reef the dead branches and huge masses, which 
 are afterwards ground to powder and spread 
 far over the bottom of the sea. 
 
 It is impossible to say how many varieties 
 of coral-workers there are; for Ehrenberg, 
 D'Arbigny and others are continually discov- 
 ering more. Already, however, fifteen hun- 
 dred varieties of foraminifers are known to 
 science, seven hundred polythalmian or many- 
 celled insects, and three hundred and eighty- 
 six anthozoa, most of which still exist. 
 
184 
 
 The bright-coloured and branched corals 
 are used only for ornamental purposes, such 
 as ladies' necklaces, bracelets, brooches, rings, 
 &c. ; and their value depends upon the size, 
 shape, colour and solidity of the specimens. 
 The red and black varieties are most highly 
 esteemed. Some portions of Sicilian coral have 
 realized eight or ten guineas the ounce, while 
 other parts of the same mass have been sold 
 for one shilling the pound. Coral is mentioned 
 very anciently, being noticed in the book of 
 Job as common, and in Ezek. xxvii. 16 as 
 an article of trade with the ancient com- 
 mercial city of Tyre. . Large quantities are 
 still brought from the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean and Eed Seas, the Persian Gulf and 
 the coast of Sumatra. In ancient times black 
 coral was deemed a very efficacious divining- 
 rod. 
 
 Coral-rock is often used for building-pur- 
 poses in the South Sea Islands; and Mr. 
 Williams, in his " Missionary Enterprises/' 
 describes the beautiful plaster, of delicate 
 bloom colour, which he made from calcined 
 coral, to adorn the walls of. his chapel and 
 school-house. Indeed, the Sphinx of Egypt, 
 and some of the pyramids, are built chiefly 
 
COKAL. 185 
 
 of nummulitic limestone, consisting of small- 
 chambered shells disposed in so flat a whorl 
 as to resemble a piece of money, called in 
 Latin nummus. These are cemented together 
 by the chalky remains of thousands of smaller 
 insects. 
 
 "Yes," said Edward's uncle; "I remember 
 that in the Alps of Dauphiny, one day, I came 
 to an old church in a village in the Val de 
 Bourg d'Oysans, at least six thousand feet 
 above the sea, which looked so worn and 
 ancient that I climbed the cliff on which it 
 stood, to examine its walls ; and, to my asto- 
 nishment, I found them all worm-eaten, as I 
 thought at first, an inch or two in depth. But 
 when I examined the stones more carefully I 
 found that they were only weather-worn, so 
 that the corals of which they were composed 
 could all be seen and studied. In the lapse of 
 centuries the storms had dissolved and car- 
 ried out the softer mud between the branching 
 coral. This gave the church its gray and 
 venerable air." 
 
 Speaking of the nummulite fossils, con- 
 tinued Mr. Goodman, who had listened with 
 pleasure to this interruption, a specimen of 
 nummulitic limestone from the Crimea is pre- 
 16* 
 
186 CHALK. 
 
 cisely the same as one from Egypt, but becomes 
 fragile and crumbling when exposed to the 
 air. 
 
 None of these curious shells are now found 
 as living animals, for the nummulites seem to 
 be quite extinct : indeed, it is a curious fact 
 that there is a much larger variety of extinct 
 infusorial shells than now exist; and, from 
 the known habits of their successors in the 
 present day, they were a sort of scavengers 
 in creation, eating up refuse vegetable matter, 
 and were themselves the prey of larger in- 
 sects ; while their bony coverings were left, 
 not only to form the rocks we now behold, but 
 to furnish stone for building, powder for white- 
 washing and plate-cleaning, even the glasses 
 out of which we drink, and the medicine we 
 take for the cure of disease. Well may 
 Ehrenberg assert " that though these micro- 
 scopic organisms are inferior in energy to 
 lions and elephants, yet their united influ- 
 ence is far more important than that of those 
 animals." 
 
 Alice looked puzzled at this statement, and 
 inquired how it could be made out that they 
 furnish all these useful articles. 
 
 Mr. Goodman then told her that all limestone 
 
MAGNESIA. 187 
 
 and all marbles are but chalk in another stage. 
 The glass we drink out of and furnish our win- 
 dows with, depends largely on flint sand for 
 its transparency and pureness. Chalk finely 
 ground is a most useful medicine for some 
 diseases, though, like most other medicines, 
 injurious if taken in excess. Chalk is some- 
 times prescribed by medical men for various 
 ailments : camphorated chalk is used for tooth- 
 powder. 
 
 It is very useful as an absorbent and cor- 
 rective of acids, but, of course, needs pro- 
 fessional skill in its application. Some draw- 
 ing-chalks are made of this pure white mate- 
 rial, nearly all the white, gray and black 
 crayons; but the red, and other colours, are 
 generally prepared from varieties of clay and 
 ochre and coloured with metallic oxides. 
 Chalk calcined, or burned to powder, is used 
 in putty and various cements, and also for 
 manuring land as it greatly promotes the 
 growth of the short rich grass which im- 
 proves sheep for pasturing fine Southdown 
 mutton. 
 
 The calcined MAGNESIA of the apothecary 
 looks something like chalk, and is an earth of 
 similar nature, deriving its name from the pro- 
 
188 CHALK. 
 
 vince of Asia Minor where it was first used. 
 It is now found pure in Piedmont, Moravia, 
 the United States and the East Indies; but 
 it mingles in the composition of many mineral 
 substances, making them feel soft and soapy 
 to the touch. The magnesia of the druggist 
 is generally prepared by calcining the mag- 
 nesian limestone, which drives off the water 
 and carbonic acid, or from the most bitter 
 sea- water or magnesian spring waters. 
 
 There is a particular formation, below the 
 chalk and above the coal, to which the English 
 geologists who first studied the rocks gave 
 the name of the Magnesian Limestone ; and 
 this name is still retained. In this lime- 
 stone are found shells and corals in abundance, 
 and also the scales and teeth and bones of 
 ancient fish, such as are no longer found in 
 the seas by fishermen. But there are many 
 others which deserve it as well. The Mis- 
 souri and Kentucky geologists called the 
 oldest and lowest limestones of all Magnesian 
 Limestones; for so they are, and the springs 
 which flow from them are like medicine, and 
 injure both man and beast. It is from drink- 
 ing this water where it stands in pools and 
 becomes strong that the "milk-sickness" of 
 
MARL. 189 
 
 the "West originates. Sometimes soda is more 
 common in the limestone than magnesia; such 
 is the case with the mineral water which 
 rises in the deep Artesian well of Louisville, 
 Kentucky. When the carbonate of lime and 
 the carbonate of magnesia are in exactly equal 
 proportions, the rock is called a dolomite. 
 Many of the limestone rocks of Canada 
 are dolomites ; and so are many of the rocks 
 of the Alps. There is one entire mountain, 
 six thousand feet high, rising in the Alps like 
 a great tower with straight sides, all dolomite ; 
 and travellers come from afar to see it, on 
 account of its grandeur. 
 
 The metal magnesium is the basis of mag- 
 nesia, which mingles in the composition of 
 several minerals. Meerschaum, or foam of 
 the sea, is an earthy carbonate of magnesia, 
 extremely light, of a yellowish-gray colour. 
 When first dug, it is soft and greasy, and 
 lathers, like soap : the Tartars use it for 
 washing clothes, and the Turks for making 
 smoking-pipes. 
 
 MARL belongs to these chalky earths, and 
 seems to be still undergoing the process of 
 formation. It is a mixture of chalk, or car- 
 bonate of lime, and silica, alumina, with some- 
 
190 CHALK. 
 
 times a little bitumen and oxide of iron. It is 
 termed shell-marl, or clay-marl, according to 
 the material chiefly predominating, and, being 
 always found in valleys, which were formerly 
 lakes, or on the shores of lakes now existing, 
 the idea is confirmed that it is derived partly 
 from the sediment of lime-springs, and partly 
 from the decomposition of the shells or secre- 
 tions of the fresh-water shell-insects inhabit- 
 ing the waters. Marl is dug from open pits, 
 and much used for dressing land. It some- 
 times becomes solidified by nature's chemistry 
 into rock-marl. The shell sand of the Cornish 
 beach is so valued as a manure that five or 
 six millions of cubic feet are annually conveyed 
 from the coast and spread over the inland 
 fields. When left undisturbed on the shore, it 
 gradually consolidates into beds of considerable 
 thickness. I have already described to you 
 the shell-marl and greensand-marl of the At- 
 lantic coast, which constitute so valuable a 
 manure. 
 
 Various proportions of carbonate of lime, 
 with small mixtures of other materials, pro- 
 duce beautiful minerals, such as arragonite, 
 consisting of a mass of glossy, silky-looking 
 fibres of mixed colours, green, pearl, gray, 
 
ASBESTOS. 191 
 
 violet and blue. It is sometimes termed flos 
 ferrij or iron silk, and is somewhat like as- 
 bestos in appearance ; but asbestos consists 
 of very little lime and alumina, with a great 
 deal of silex and magnesia, and a small quan- 
 tity of oxide of iron. It is so pliable that its 
 fibres can be separated and woven into cloth. 
 It does not consume in fire, and was therefore 
 much used by the ancients for wicks to their 
 oil-lamps, while the bodies of the dead were 
 frequently wrapped in its cloth to preserve the 
 ashes separate when burned, as was customary 
 among many nations. There are various kinds 
 of asbestos, bearing the names of amianthus, 
 mountain cork, and mountain leather, moun- 
 tain paper, or mountain wood, as its texture 
 most nearly resembles these substances. The 
 cloth of asbestos is purified by burning; but 
 it loses weight, and becomes less flexible. 
 Under a very strong heat the fibres appear to 
 melt; but, instead of running together in a 
 mass like metals, they moulder and fall down, 
 and are blown away by any slight current of 
 air. Fine specimens of asbestos are found in 
 the Highlands of New York; and the fibres 
 are worth, when long and silky, four dollars 
 a pound. They are used now in small bundles 
 
192 CHALK. 
 
 to place in the tubes of camphene and other 
 explosive-oil lamps, because the flame will 
 never travel back between them. They are 
 also used by dentists, who melt their delicate 
 ends with a blow-pipe and thus obtain a re- 
 markable kind of solder. They have been 
 woven into cloth and made up into dresses, in 
 which men have walked through fire and not 
 been burned, or into gloves, with which red-hot 
 iron has been handled safely. The coarser 
 kinds are used in stuffing the sides of fire- 
 proof safes. It is a remarkable mineral; but 
 many of the earths are as remarkable for 
 beauty as this is for its utility. Gems are 
 mostly crystallized earths. 
 
 When Mr. Goodman began to talk of earths, 
 Edward pointed to the black garden MOULD, 
 and asked what it was. His father told him 
 that it is chiefly the result of decayed vege- 
 tables, with a mixture of animal matter. The 
 coral-rocks do not exhibit earth enough to 
 be fruitful till several seasons of vegetable 
 growth have lived and died upon them, while 
 the gases which these vegetables imbibe 
 from the atmosphere not only combine with 
 the surface of the rock, changing its composi- 
 tion and making it crumble, but their decay 
 
BLACK DIRT. 193 
 
 generates new gas; and the fluids of sea and 
 land animals add another source of fertility, 
 while turning into that material of which 
 the} 7 were first created. 
 
 In the limestone cave of Kuhloh, in Ger- 
 many, more than five hundred cubic feet of 
 black animal dust, impressively denominated 
 a the dust of death," was found, resulting 
 entirely from the decomposition of bears who 
 inhabited such caves in ancient days ; and in 
 Portland Island, Lulworth Cave and other 
 places, there are layers of "black dirt," as the 
 quarry men call it, an ancient vegetable soil, 
 of dark brown or black colour, from twelve to 
 eighteen inches thick, evidently formed from 
 the decay of leaves, since earthy lignite, silici- 
 fied trunks of trees, and other remains of plants, 
 abound in it. These facts wonderfully illustrate 
 the words of Scripture, " Dust thou art, and 
 unto dust shalt thou return;" and also the 
 New Testament declaration, " This mortal 
 must put on immortality." Those who watch 
 the ceaseless round of decay and reproduction 
 which perpetually renews the face of our 
 earth, rendering it beautiful to the eye and a 
 useful dwelling-place for men, must find their 
 belief in the promised resurrection greatly con- 
 
 N 17 
 
194 CHALK. 
 
 firmed ; for He who can produce such brilliant 
 gems and such fragrant flowers from unsightly 
 soil can assuredly change our vile bodies, 
 that they may be fashioned like ujito the 
 glorious body of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and 
 those who love and trust him will not only 
 see him, but be like him in the world to 
 come. 
 
THE OLD TOWN-HALL. 195 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 THE old town-hall could be propped up 
 no longer. Its picturesque gables nodded 
 alarmingly over the pathway, and its worm- 
 eaten timbers were perpetually giving way, so 
 that their original carved work could scarcely 
 be traced. It was, therefore, condemned to 
 destruction, and the artists set to work to 
 delineate its venerable appearance, while the 
 architects devised plans for a new building, 
 which should be the pride of the county. Mr. 
 Goodman was one of the building-committee ; 
 and Edward, whose antiquarian reverence for 
 the old hall did not abate his boyish delight 
 in the progress of the new one, was continu- 
 ally on the spot, equally interested with all 
 that the old masonry revealed by the break- 
 ing down of the old plaster and partitions, 
 and the deposit of the new materials for the 
 structure now contemplated. 
 
196 LIME MAEBLE GRANITE. 
 
 Sometimes lie was permitted to stay in the 
 committee-room; and his favourite grotto- 
 work much increased his interest in the dis- 
 cussions upon the comparative merits of brick 
 and stone, granite and marble, specimens of 
 which passed in review, and, when done with, 
 were not unfrequently bestowed upon him 
 and other young people who took part in 
 making "the friendship-grotto." 
 
 The new town-hall was a handsome affair. 
 Day by day it rose higher and higher. The 
 walls were of gray granite, the floors and 
 staircases of white freestone, while the broad 
 fireplaces of the principal apartments were 
 of Italian marble, some red and some black, 
 but so highly polished as to exhibit every tiny 
 marking peculiar to that substance. Edward 
 and Alice admired this very much, and soon 
 discovered the shells with which it was stud- 
 ded. They then examined all the varieties 
 of marble in the grotto, and perceived many 
 containing similar remains, especially when 
 they used their magnifying-glass to any 
 wetted smooth surface ; and they sought the 
 first opportunity of asking their father if the 
 marble was made of any kind of chalk. Mr. 
 Goodman told them that all marble is lime- 
 
MAEBLE. 197 
 
 stone, and, as chalk is one variety, of course 
 they consist of similar materials, though in 
 different conditions. LIME, and especially 
 the carbonate of lime, of which chalk and 
 marble are the purest specimens, abounds so 
 largely in the rocks that it is estimated to 
 form one-seventh of the crust of our globe. 
 
 He further stated that the great mass of all 
 known rocks seems to consist of different com- 
 binations of eight or nine simple materials; 
 and these are called quartz, felspar, mica, 
 hornblende, the carbonates of lime, magnesia, 
 soda, potash and oxide of iron. 
 
 The substance termed MARBLE abounds in 
 all great ranges of the primary or earliest- 
 formed rocks of Europe, in the north of Africa, 
 and in the United States; while we know 
 from the Bible that marbles of various colours 
 were early used as building-materials, both in 
 Syria and Persia. David delivered to Solo- 
 mon " marble stones in abundance" for the 
 temple; and the palace of Ahasuerus was 
 paved with " red, blue, white and black mar- 
 ble or alabaster." (Esther i. 6.) The sculp- 
 tured slabs of Nineveh and stately white 
 columns of Persepolis attest its use among 
 the wealthy nations who flourished in ages 
 17* 
 
198 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 long gone by. Quarries of marble have been 
 lately discovered undermining Jerusalem, with 
 blocks hewn and partly squared, as if the 
 workmen had but lately left them. The most 
 compact and highly crystallized is esteemed 
 the best. Some is of a dazzling white colour 
 and close grain, resembling fine loaf-sugar, 
 and hence is called by some writers saccharine 
 marble. It is valued for statuary. Such are 
 the Parian and Carrara marbles. These will 
 take so high a polish as to appear almost 
 translucent. From Carrara not less than 
 half a million's worth of white marble is now 
 annually exported. The quarries are very 
 accessible, and the rock so free from flaw that 
 large blocks, of two hundred cubic feet, can be 
 detached by means of very simple machinery. 
 Marbles in great variety were used by ancient 
 sculptors, as may be seen in the British Mu- 
 seum; but their localities are not all known 
 now. Very fine white statuary marbles have 
 been of late discovered in the State of Ver- 
 mont ; and three sides of the Girard College at 
 Philadelphia are built of white Vermont mar- 
 ble, because the white marbles of the Schuyl- 
 kill quarries, near Philadelphia, furnish only 
 a limited supply. Similar white marble oc- 
 
MARBLE. 199 
 
 curs all along the line of the Blue Ridge re- 
 gion, as far as South Carolina. 
 
 Alice here inquired the meaning of the 
 word marble, because she had noticed that 
 such very different-looking substances were 
 called by that name. 
 
 Her father replied that it is of the same 
 origin as the French word marbre, the Latin 
 marmor, and the Greek marmaros, shining 
 or glittering. All marbles effervesce with 
 acid, and consequently are injured by acid 
 applications ; and all will burn into ordinary 
 lime. They are variously marked, according 
 to the different substances mingling with 
 them, or their different degrees of compact- 
 ness, and are differently grouped by scientific 
 persons. Sculptors and architects distinguish 
 them into about eight sorts: namely, one- 
 coloured, pure black or pure white; varie- 
 gated, marked with irregular spots and 
 veins ; madrepore, when studded with round 
 encrinitic or coral markings; shell, when 
 only a few shells are interspersed through the 
 mass; lumachelli, or fire marble, entirely 
 composed of shells, with veins of flame-coloured 
 cry s tal flashing like fire as the table is moved ; 
 cipolin, containing veins of greenish talc; 
 
200 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 Breccia marbles, formed of angular frag- 
 ments of various composition and colour; and 
 pudding-stone marble, when the fragments 
 are round instead of angular. 
 
 This is a stone called verde antique, which 
 is a curious, and rather pretty, mixture of 
 white marble and green serpentine. The 
 Welsh Mona marble is very similar. Fine 
 dark-gray and purple marbles are found in 
 Ireland, and known under the names of the 
 places whence they are quarried. A fine 
 black marble, with a white shell, was so ad- 
 mired by the Eoman consul Lucullus that 
 he gave it the name of lucullite. The same 
 sort is now found in Derbyshire, Kilkenny, 
 Cork and Galway, and is sometimes called 
 Nero antico by the Italians, who are fond of 
 distinguishing every variety by some new and 
 peculiar name, and sometimes give two or 
 three different names to the same stone, a 
 practice that is very puzzling to youthful col- 
 lectors and inexperienced artists. Verde an- 
 tique is also found in Vermont. 
 
 The Florentine ruin marble is a very com- 
 pact limestone, and, seen at a little distance, 
 resembles drawings done in bistre, or wood- 
 soot. The blue Vesuvius marble is generally 
 
PORTLAND STONE. 201 
 
 found in loose masses among blocks of stone 
 ejected from the volcano, though not having, 
 apparently, been melted or heated by the sub- 
 terranean fire. This was used for the sky in 
 ancient mosaic-work. 
 
 Mr. Goodman then turned to some speci- 
 mens of Bath stone and Portland stone from 
 England, remarking that these and other 
 oolites, of which they are a part, extend, with 
 little interruption, across the island. This 
 class of stone is formed of minute, round con- 
 cretions of lime, hence called roe-stone oolite, 
 or fishing-rock. It is much used by archi- 
 tects ; but it is very porous, and therefore 
 easily affected by the weather, which makes it 
 moulder away. Oolites of a much older age 
 occur in the United States, but are very 
 scarce. 
 
 The pea-stone is very similar, but the grains 
 are larger, and composed of concentric layers, 
 enclosing a bubble of air, a grain of sand, or 
 some fragment of mineral matter: it abounds 
 in Bohemia. A similar substance, called tufa- 
 ceous limestone, is found encrusting various 
 substances, such as leaves, shells, b'ones, &c. 
 In the British Museum is a human skull cov- 
 ered with lime-crystals deposited by the river 
 
202 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 Tiber. Indeed, Eome itself is built very 
 much of travertine, a stone composed in this 
 way, and the formation of which is still in 
 progress. 
 
 There are numerous delicate white veins 
 and crusts sometimes seen inside of limestone 
 caves, which are called agaric mineral, or 
 rock-milk. It is produced by the continual 
 action of water upon the surface of limestone. 
 When water drops through the roof of a 
 cave, long pendants, like icicles, are gradu- 
 ally formed, hanging in tubes or branches, 
 and sometimes in sheets resembling drapery: 
 these are called stalactites. The same waters 
 sometimes drop on to the floor, and, as they 
 run off, leave a mass of hardened carbonate 
 of lime in irregular shapes : those are stalag- 
 mites, and are sometimes so finely crystallized 
 or compacted as to merit the name of ala- 
 baster. The Oriental alabaster, however, has 
 in it a small admixture of gypsum, or sul- 
 phate of lime. This is often used for scent- 
 boxes; and some think that the alabaster box 
 filled with precious ointment, mentioned in 
 the Scripture, was made of this delicate ma- 
 terial. 
 
 The Grotto of Antiparos, in the Archi- 
 
GROTTO OF ANTIPAROS. 203 
 
 pelago, is described as filled with petrifactions 
 of all colours, so singularly disposed as to 
 resemble trees, flowers, brooks and animals 
 all turned to stone. The floor is rugged with 
 brilliant lime crystals, of red, blue, green 
 and yellow ; while stalactites of white marble, 
 fallen from the roof, mingle among them. 
 One side of the passage to this remarkable 
 cave is a sloping wall formed of a single mass 
 of purple marble, studded with rock-crystals, 
 looking like a row of amethysts. Some of the 
 stalactites are five-and-twenty feet long, of 
 dazzling whiteness, and yet so transparent that, 
 when illuminated by torch-light, the low, nar- 
 row alley by which it is entered glitters as if 
 it were really the fabled valley of diamonds. 
 The Castleton Cave, and crystallized caverns 
 in the Peak of Derbyshire, owe their beauties 
 to similar stalactites and crystals. The cele- 
 brated Austrian caves of Adelsberg and Mag- 
 dalena have wonderful sheets of stalactite, be- 
 hind which the guides hold their torches, and 
 make them appear like transparent-white glit- 
 tering curtains. A river flows through one of 
 these caves for several miles ; and in it are many 
 of those whitish, slimy, half-lizard half-fish 
 like animals without eyes and furnished with 
 
204 LIME MAEBLE GRANITE. 
 
 both lungs and gills, which naturalists have 
 called the proteus anguinis. 
 
 Weir's Cave, in Virginia, is a miracle of 
 beauty. In one of its rooms, called the music- 
 hall, parallel sheets of alabaster hang from 
 the roof, and, when struck with a mallet, give 
 out various organ-tones of a grandeur in har- 
 mony with the mysterious darkness of the 
 scene. In another room the limestone drip- 
 pings have formed a gigantic statue of Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 But of all the caves in the world known to 
 man, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky excels 
 in size and variety of admirable sights. Its 
 profound abysses, where lakes and rivers lie, 
 its long galleries and lofty domes, its 
 monstrous columns covered with crystals, 
 its roof of stars, as it seems to the eye when lit 
 by the torches of travellers, fill the mind of 
 the beholder with wonder and awe. 
 
 Edward pointed upwards, where a few 
 humble specimens were here and there stuck 
 on the roof of the grotto; and his father con- 
 tinued to state that in one of the English coal- 
 mines, it is said, there is a constant formation 
 of limestone, caused by the trickling of water 
 through the rocks. This stone would be 
 
THE SUNDAY STONE. 205 
 
 always white, like white marble, were it not 
 that men are working in the mine, and as 
 the black dust rises from the coal it mixes 
 with the soft lime and thus tinges it black. 
 During the night, however, when no coal- 
 dust rises, the stone is white; the next day, 
 while the miners work, a black layer is de- 
 posited; and so on alternate layers of black 
 and white are formed during the week, till 
 Sunday comes. Then, as the miners do not 
 work on the Sabbath, so much larger a layer 
 of white stone occurs, that they call it "the 
 Sunday stone," and can thus note their Sab- 
 bath observance marked for them on this 
 stone. 
 
 At West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, a 
 calcareous breccia was formed in the short 
 period of seventeen years, by the chips 
 thrown off in hewing marble being cemented 
 together by the lime sediment from a stream 
 which flowed over them, till the breccia thus 
 formed became nearly as solid as the original 
 limestone. Such incidents as this afford in- 
 teresting evidence of some of the modes by 
 which God works in nature. At Clermont, in 
 France, a mineral spring has dropped its 
 limestone for many centuries, so as to form a 
 
 18 
 
206 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 bridge of rock, which it has pushed across a 
 stream and is still forming on the opposite 
 bank. Close by is a water-wheel, in a shed 
 furnished with shelves, on which are placed 
 baskets, birds, coins and other objects, which 
 are all coated with the spray and turned at 
 last into stone. 
 
 The pretty satin-spar necklaces which you 
 buy in the shops are nothing but fibrous lime- 
 stone, found chiefly in Derbyshire, England, 
 where the rarest and most beautiful lime crys- 
 tals are found, though various sorts are met 
 with in every part of the world. Some of these 
 crystals are very pretty, and appear in six- 
 sided and three-sided prisms, and also as 
 pyramids. Indeed, calcareous spar, or lime 
 crystals, occur in no less than six hundred 
 different forms, and vary in colour, gray, 
 blue, yellow, green, red, white and brown. 
 The transparent crystals reflect double. 
 
 Gypsum, composed of sulphate of lime, is 
 known as alabaster, and, when reduced to 
 powder by heat, forms plaster of Paris, so 
 called from the quarries near Paris, where 
 the mineral abounds. It is found principally 
 above the chalk-formation. Calcined, pow- 
 dered and mixed with water, it easily runs 
 
GYPSUM. 207 
 
 into moulds for images, and ornamental work 
 for buildings. It is also used for stereotype 
 and pottery moulds, and for models and casts 
 of various kinds. Mixed with quicklime, 
 gypsum makes an excellent mortar, and, 
 simply ground and powdered, is considered 
 a fertilizing manure for land. Many of the 
 Derbyshire and Staffordshire gypsum-quarries 
 yield specimens compact enough for the turn- 
 ing-lathe, which are made into jars, vases, 
 and chimney-ornaments, almost rivalling in 
 beauty the specimens of alabaster brought from 
 Volterra, in Tuscany. A very large trade in. 
 alabaster statues, boxes, pedestals for time- 
 pieces, &c., is carried on in Italy, where the 
 chisel is used as well as the lathe; but all 
 alabaster articles require to be kept closely 
 under glass shades, as exposure to the air 
 quickly destroys both their colour and trans- 
 lucency. I have already told you how the 
 American gypsum is found in Nova Scotia, in 
 Central New York and in Southern Virginia. 
 But there are vast fields of gypsum also in 
 Western Arkansas and among the Rocky 
 Mountains. 
 
 The pavement in the streets of Plymouth 
 in England look veined and polished, like 
 
208 LIME MABBLE GEANITE. 
 
 marble, when it rains: being made of the 
 common marble abounding in Devonshire, 
 the rain displays its markings as well as 
 polishing would. Limestone, with admixtures 
 of magnesia, silica, sulphur and several other 
 substances, produces many varieties of rock 
 and stone. Some of these, as the stinkstone, 
 or swinestone, emit a peculiar fetid smell 
 when rubbed; others give not only a phos- 
 phorescent odour, but light tinged with dif- 
 ferent colours. Magnesian limestone some- 
 times called dolomite, after Dolomieu, a 
 French geologist is one of the hardest and 
 most d arable varieties. The beautiful white 
 sort found in the isle of Tenedos was much 
 used by ancient sculptors; and modern archi- 
 tects still esteem it for building. Thin long 
 slabs of this dolomite, and even of common 
 granulated limestone, may be rendered flex- 
 ible by exposure to heat for a few hours. 
 Some tables made of this in the Borghese 
 Palace at Borne excited much attention among 
 the curious. A similar species exists near Tyne- 
 mouth Castle. It is cream-coloured, and is 
 easily cut with a knife. It is extremely porous, 
 and loses its flexibility when moderately dry, 
 though when either very wet or very dry it 
 
SERPENTINE. 209 
 
 readily bends. All marble is elastic; and a 
 slab will quiver when shaken. 
 
 Serpentine is another pretty, green mixture 
 of lime, magnesia, alum, iron, &c., some 
 varieties of which are magnetic. The smooth, 
 compact stones used by lithographers for their 
 drawing or writing plates are often made of 
 lias, or magnesian limestone, from Bavaria. 
 Lime is also much used in mortar, and for 
 stucco. Veins of lead, zinc and silver are fre- 
 quent in limestone rocks ; among the bunches 
 of lime crystals, cubes of lead and copper are 
 often seen, in pretty contrast with the pure 
 white crystals. 
 
 Edward asked how, if limestone is so use- 
 ful for pavement, it happened that his shoes 
 were so spoiled when he went to the lime- 
 kilns some days before. 
 
 Mr. Goodman stated that all calcined or burnt 
 lime is called quicklime, and when deprived of 
 carbonic acid is exceedingly caustic, quickly 
 causing decomposition, both of vegetable and 
 animal substances, and therefore shoes, being 
 made of leather, would be speedily destroyed by 
 it. Lime is used for this very purpose by tan- 
 ners for making wash-leather. When exposed 
 to the air, lime quickly imbibes carbonic acid 
 
 18* 
 
210 
 
 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 from the atmosphere, and is then a useful 
 addition as manure for corn and grass lands. 
 
 In ordinary language, lime is termed an 
 earth; but chemically it is the oxide, or rust, 
 of the metal calcium. This metal, however, 
 is never found in its native state, and, when 
 procured in small quantities by the chemist, 
 it quickly becomes an oxide again. When 
 water is thrown on lime, it is observable how 
 quickly it is absorbed, while much heat and 
 vapour are perceived. It is obvious enough 
 when the workmen slack lime, as they turn it. 
 
 Edward took up one or two specimens of 
 GRANITE, asking if they were made of lime. 
 
 PORPHYRITIC GRANITE. 
 
 No, said his father. Granite is a rock com- 
 pounded of quartz, felspar and mica, with 
 sometimes other substances, among which 
 
GNEISS. 211 
 
 may be lime, but very seldom. Stonecutters 
 speak of forty-two kinds of granite. When 
 the crystals of felspar are very large and 
 imbedded in a cement, the rock is called 
 porphyry. When, instead of the rock being 
 solid, it is made up of thin layers, and the 
 flakes of mica seem to lie in one direction, 
 and the quartz is not well crystallized, we 
 call the rock gneiss. When instead of shining 
 specks or flakes of mica we have black specks 
 or crystals of hornblende, we call it sienite, 
 from the city of Syene, in Egypt, where the 
 great temple-quarries are which the ancients 
 used. The great obelisk in the centre of 
 Paris is of sienite, as is also Mount Sinai 
 in Arabia: so that the rock might bear the 
 name of sinaite as well as sienite. The pre- 
 vailing colours of granite are gray, white, 
 flesh-colour, red and black. It is composed 
 sometimes of such coarse materials that the 
 separate crystals are a foot or more in dia- 
 meter. In some lumps of American granite 
 large flakes of mica could be cut off from the 
 shining parts. The mica of the Highlands of 
 New York comes out of the rock sometimes 
 in plates two feet square. In Russia such 
 plates are used for window-glass. In other 
 
212 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 kinds of granite the grains are so fine as to 
 be scarcely distinguishable by the naked eye ; 
 and between the coarsest and the finest there 
 is great variety. The finer kinds are the 
 most useful, and the coarser most interesting 
 for the various minerals observable in them. 
 One sort is called graphic granite, because 
 the crystals of quartz make the surface look 
 as if covered with letters. 
 
 GRAPHIC GRANITE. 
 
 The gray Aberdeen granite is now valued 
 for building and pedestals, as it is susceptible 
 of a high polish. That of Peterhead is red- 
 dened by oxide of iron in the felspar crystals. 
 The Grampian Hills in Scotland, the Cumber- 
 land and Cornish Hills in England, the Wick- 
 low Mountain in Ireland, the Alps in Switzer- 
 land, the Pyrenees in Spain, the Dofrefield in 
 Norway, the Ural Mountains in Russia, the 
 Abyssinian and other African ranges, and the 
 
GRANITE. 213 
 
 Andes in South America, are all composed of 
 rocks more or less granitic. Indeed, as Hum- 
 boldt remarks, "when we pass to another 
 hemisphere, we see new forms of plants and 
 animals, and even new constellations in the 
 heavens; but in the rocks we still recognise 
 
 our old acquaintances, the same granite, the 
 same gneiss, the same quartz, and the rest." 
 
 The first railroad in the United States was 
 made to carry the celebrated Quincy granite 
 to Boston; and in the neighbourhood of 
 these quarries has been found recently that 
 extraordinary fossil trilobite called the Para- 
 doxides. Similar granite-quarries are wrought 
 on Cape Ann near Gloucester. New Hampshire 
 is often called the Granite State. Great dikes 
 of granite rise through all the rocks of the 
 Lawrentian Mountains in Eastern Canada. 
 
214 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 Gneiss, as I have said, continued Mr. Good- 
 man, for no one seemed disposed to interrupt 
 him, gneiss, of which I see more than one 
 specimen built into your grotto, is a rock 
 composed of the same materials as granite, 
 but differently arranged. It has been called 
 stratified granite, because the felspar, mica 
 and quartz, instead of being mixed together, 
 occur in thin, irregular layers and present a 
 pretty surface of dark and light stripes. 
 Gneiss splits most easily in the plane of the 
 darker layers ; and the surface thus exposed is 
 almost entirely covered with shining spangles 
 of mica. Occasionally the layers constituting 
 gneiss, instead of occurring in thin laminse, 
 are divided into thick beds. Where veins of 
 granite and gneiss intersect each other, the 
 gneiss appears to have a larger quantity of 
 felspar and to be of redder colour than usual. 
 
 This shining mica, which peels off so easily 
 into flakes, is one of the many compounds of 
 silica and alumina with oxide of iron, and 
 potash. It is transparent, and sometimes is 
 found in crystals more than a foot square, and 
 can then be split into thin plates for windows 
 and lanterns. It will bear heat and vibration 
 better than glass, and is therefore well adapted 
 
MICA. 215 
 
 for ship-lights, (when glass would be shattered 
 by the report of cannon,) and also for anthra- 
 cite-stove doors. The largest sheets of mica 
 are brought from Siberia, and termed Siberian 
 glass. 
 
 Talc is a softer, yet less elastic, sort of mica, 
 owing its peculiarity to the presence of 
 magnesia. It is used in making porcelain 
 paste and in polishing alabaster, and is some- 
 times mixed with rouge for the toilet, to 
 soften the skin. Carpenters and tailors use 
 it as a marking- material. There are said 
 to be ten sorts of mica, each bearing a differ- 
 ent name. The baldstein or figure-stone of 
 China is soft, and easily cut into the grotesque 
 figures brought from that country. The 
 pearly gray or red lapidolite of Scotland is cut 
 into beautiful snuff-boxes. The green earth 
 of Verona forms the mountain-green of artists 
 in water-colours; and steatite, or soapstone, is 
 useful for removing grease from silk and 
 woollen stuffs. Many savages especially 
 those on the banks of the Orinoco eat great 
 quantities of steatite. It does not really con- 
 tain nourishment; but probably it removes 
 the sense of emptiness, which is so oppressive. 
 
 Granite and porphyritic rocks are solid, not 
 
216 LIME MARBLE GRANITE. 
 
 stratified, and seem to owe their mixture in 
 a great measure to heat, and are therefore 
 termed igneous rocks. Many kinds of por- 
 phyry seem to have been vitrified, or turned 
 into glass by some natural process, while the 
 admixture composing granite appears to have 
 been nearly in the condition of boiling mud, 
 yet not so completely fused as lava usually is. 
 Chalk has actually been converted into crys- 
 tallized marble by heating it ^powerfully in a 
 closed gun-barrel. 
 
 Granite rocks look very beautiful, and give 
 one an idea of strength and firmness. So 
 obvious and striking are these and other 
 characteristics of rocks, that it is not sur- 
 prising that they are frequently used in the 
 Scriptures to illustrate the character and 
 attributes of God. Indeed, the Scriptures 
 having been written in lands abounding with 
 rocks, the minds of the inspired penmen 
 gathered many figurative illustrations of 
 divine truth from the scenery around them, 
 whether wandering in the deserts of Arabia, 
 peacefully tilling the Land of Promise, or 
 wearing away the seventy years' captivity in 
 Babylon. Sometimes the eternity of Jehovah 
 is suggested by the "Rock of ages;" some- 
 
GRANITE. 217 
 
 times his protecting power, "Be thou my 
 strong rock/' (Ps. xxxi. 2;) a refuge in danger, 
 "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I," 
 (Ps. Ixi. 2 ;) a place of refreshment and safety, 
 "As the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land." (Isa. xxxii. 2.) And this same sub- 
 stance is typical, in man, of his hardened heart, 
 insensible to all the spiritual tillage of pro- 
 phets and apostles, till, under the Holy Spirit's 
 influence, the word of God like as a fire, or 
 " like a hammer that breaketh the rock in 
 pieces," (Jer. xxiii. 29) leads the broken and 
 contrite sinner by faith to drink living water 
 from "that spiritual rock, which is Christ." 
 
 The rocks, too, that rent at the time of his 
 atoning death on the cross, may remind us 
 that the barriers between God and the sinner 
 were then removed, and that henceforth we 
 may sing, with joyful confidence, 
 
 "Rock of ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in thee." 
 
 19 
 
218 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 MR. GOODMAN read from a New York news- 
 paper, "The eruption of Vesuvius may now 
 be said to have terminated, after three weeks' 
 activity, during which a prodigious quantity 
 of lava has been ejected." 
 
 Edward remarked that Mr. T sent a 
 
 box of different stones for the grotto, some of 
 which, he said in his letter, came from Naples, 
 and all were volcanic productions : they were 
 called obsidian, pumice, basalt, amygdaloid, 
 trap, trachyte, sulphur, and some other names 
 on the labels, besides several kinds of lava. 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that lava is a general 
 term for all the molten rock or fluid mass 
 ejected from any volcano during an eruption; 
 but it is composed of a great many different 
 materials, which naturally assume various 
 appearances in cooling, and from the action 
 of the atmosphere. Most of them can be sepa- 
 
LAVA. 219 
 
 rated by chemical means. Felspar and augite 
 are the chief substances ; but so many others 
 are frequently mingled, that in the produc- 
 tions of Vesuvius alone not less than one 
 hundred different specimens of minerals have 
 been detected : they, however, form but a 
 small proportion of the whole mass of lava. 
 
 While pouring fresh from the crater of vol- 
 canoes, competent observers describe lava as 
 much resembling a river of red-hot metal 
 issuing from an immense furnace. No real 
 flame rises from lava alone, though trees, 
 half-lighted cinders, and other matters, fall- 
 ing into it, take fire and blaze up. In 
 the daytime its course is marked by a thick 
 white smoke, and at night this reflects a 
 light from the red-hot lava below. In the 
 crater of the volcano of Kirauea, in Hawaii, 
 one of the Sandwich Islands, there was seen, 
 in 1840, a lake of red-hot lava, two miles 
 in circumference, tossing its fiery surge 
 and flaming billows in terrific forms. This 
 was its " quiet mood," when only a half- 
 smothered, gurgling sound the stifled mut- 
 terings of a boiling fluid was heard; but 
 occasionally reports like those of musketry 
 resounded. Jets of lava rose ten or twelve 
 
"220 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 yards, or the separate pools in different parts 
 of the crater boiled over, and glowing streams 
 poured out for a while, and then settled down 
 again to the usual "grum murmur." 
 
 This being the "quiet mood" of the lava, 
 we may well imagine what its noisy moods 
 must be. They differ, however, at different 
 times. Some eruptions of lava are attended 
 with noise, as if from a continued discharge 
 of artillery or thunder, and flashes of elec- 
 tricity resembling lightning are seen illumi- 
 nating the clouds and vapours ; and when 
 poured in cataracts of fire from cliffs into the 
 sea, as is frequent in Hawaii, Iceland and 
 elsewhere, frightful hissings and detonations 
 mark its plunge into the waters, where it 
 kills the fish for twenty miles round, and 
 actually cooks them by the heat imparted to 
 the waves. 
 
 We cannot at all guess the quantity of lava 
 there may be in any volcanic mountains ; but 
 there is reason to think that it comes from an 
 immense depth below the surface of the earth ; 
 as from Etna alone the quantity ejected in 
 1660 was supposed by some to be twenty 
 times greater than the whole mass of the 
 mountain ; and in 1669 it covered eighty- four 
 
LAVA. 221 
 
 square miles, destroying seventy-seven thou- 
 sand persons. The matter then thrown out, 
 if extended in a thin stream, would have 
 reached four times round the earth. 
 
 On first issuing from the crater, lava 
 often flows very quickly; for Dr. Judd, who 
 visited the volcano, on one occasion was stand- 
 ing close by one of the molten pools of 
 Kirauea, when it suddenly overflowed, and he 
 had barely time to escape from a stream 
 of lava, which not only covered the spot on 
 which he had been standing, but spread over 
 a space one mile wide and half a mile long. 
 Two hundred million cubic feet of lava were 
 ejected on that occasion. Its pace soon slack- 
 ens, from the stiffening of the crust, or outside 
 portion of the mass. After flowing a hun- 
 dred yards or so, a scum forms on its surface, 
 bearing cinders, ashes, and even stones of con- 
 siderable size. Sometimes the lava finds a 
 passage under ground for some distance, and 
 reappears, cleared of this scum. But it soon 
 gathers upon it again, and, as the lava cools 
 and loses its liquid appearance, it rather 
 resembles a moving mass of red-hot coals, 
 heaped up, like a wall, from ten or twelve feet 
 high to two hundred and more. The cinders 
 
 19* 
 
222 VOLCANIC PEODUCTIONS. 
 
 rolling from above keep up a continual noise, 
 like that of a shingle beach when moved by 
 the action of the waves. The scum soon 
 cools into a thick crust, which can be crossed 
 by foot-passengers, though at the risk of its 
 burning their feet, or of breaking through it: 
 so that it should not be attempted except on 
 extreme emergencies, such as being unex- 
 pectedly enclosed by two streams of lava. 
 
 Boiling lava is much hotter than boiling 
 water, though how much is not ascertained, 
 as it is impossible to get near enough to 
 plunge any thermometer into the hottest por- 
 tion of it, even if such an instrument would 
 bear its heat. In 1822, lava, some days after 
 its eruption, was found greatly to exceed 
 boiling-water-heat when a thermometer was 
 held three feet distant from it. Glass and 
 silver melt on being placed in fluid lava; lead 
 becomes fluid in four minutes ; while double 
 that time is requisite to melt a mass of it 
 upon red-hot iron. When bell-metal was 
 submitted to the heat of lava, in 1794, the zinc 
 was separated, but the copper remained un- 
 touched. Lava is a bad conductor of heat : so 
 that, while the outer surface cools, the inner 
 portion retains its heat for a long period. 
 
VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 223 
 
 Hence copper coins are enveloped in still soft 
 lava by the guides of Vesuvius, for the amuse- 
 ment of travellers ; sticks thrust below crusts 
 that have been cool enough to walk upon for 
 years, readily take fire; and boiling water 
 issues from the souffrieres or craters of vol- 
 canoes that have been extinct beyond the 
 memory of man. I boiled eggs in many of 
 these fountains in the souffriere of Montserrat 
 in 1856, which no one then living in the 
 island had ever known in active eruption. 
 
 It is quite impossible to fix any date to the 
 beginning of volcanic action on our globe. 
 The composition and condition of the oldest 
 rocks leave no doubt that volcanoes have 
 existed from a very early period and con- 
 tributed extensively in preparing the surface 
 of the globe for vegetable and animal exist- 
 ence. The frequent allusion to the pheno- 
 mena of burning mountains in the Scriptures 
 seems to imply a very early familiarity with 
 their eruptions. I think they are mentioned 
 or alluded to by the sacred writers in texts 
 such as these : Job says, (chap, xxviii. 5,) 
 " As for the earth, under it is turned up as it 
 were fire." "The flame setteth the mountains 
 on fire." (Ps. Ixxxiii. 14.) "He toucheth 
 
224 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 the hills, and they smoke." (Ps. civ. 32.) 
 " Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. " 
 (Ps. cxliv. 5.) The effect of volcanic heat 
 seems in view when Jeremiah prophesies, 
 " The mountains shall be molten as wax 
 before the fire;" and Micah (i. 4) adds, "The 
 valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire, 
 and as the waters that are poured down a 
 steep place." All the horrors of a volcanic 
 eruption are depicted by the prophet Nahum, 
 (i. 5-12 :) " The mountains quake at him, and 
 the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his 
 presence. "Who can stand before his indigna- 
 tion ? and who can abide in the fierceness of 
 his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, 
 and the rocks are thrown down by him. 
 With an overrunning flood he will make an 
 utter end of the place thereof, and darkness 
 shall pursue his enemies. While they be 
 folden together as thorns, and while they are 
 drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured 
 as stubble fully dry. Thus saith the Lord, 
 Though they be quiet, and likewise many, yet 
 thus shall they be cut down when he shall 
 pass through." But, amid such desolation, how 
 full of comfort is the assurance, (verse 7,) 
 "The Lord is a stronghold in the day of 
 
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS. 225 
 
 trouble ; and he knoweth them that trust in 
 him." 
 
 Diodorus Siculus mentions eruptions of 
 Mount Etna as having occurred as early in 
 history as in 1693 B.C., or about the time of 
 Joseph. The ancient heathen, as is known 
 from classic authors, believed these mountains 
 to be the residence of the god Vulcan, who, 
 for some misdemeanour, was condemned to 
 forge thunderbolts for his superior's weapons. 
 They were called "Vulcania" by Virgil; and 
 since his time the term volcano has been 
 adopted for all such mountains. Mount Ara- 
 rat bears evident marks of volcanic origin. 
 Indeed, as granite is found in many localities as 
 if forced up from great depths in perpendicular 
 streams, much as lava is seen to be raised in 
 modern times, Mount Sinai, and other moun- 
 tain masses of granite, may have been up- 
 heaved by volcanic action in very early times. 
 It is evident that there is force enough in a 
 volcano to raise large masses of matter. The 
 volcano Cotopaxi has been 'known to project 
 a stone one hundred and nine cubic yards in 
 volume to the distance of nine miles. It was 
 the celebrated Von Buch's theory that all vol- 
 canoes were burst upward, or tilted from the 
 p 
 
226 VOLCANIC PEODUCTIONS. 
 
 centre outward all around; but it has been 
 clearly shown that this was a mistake, and 
 that Etna has been built up by successive layers 
 of lava and cinders thrown up around its vent. 
 
 When lava cools, it becomes too solid to 
 flow onward; but it cools so slowly that lava 
 ejected from Jorullo, in Mexico, one hundred 
 years ago, is not yet cold; and lava from the 
 same volcano was in motion after the lapse of 
 ten years. The lava from Etna in 1819 moved 
 at the rate of a yard per day nine month? 
 after the eruption. Advantage has been some- 
 times taken of this to save cities from destruc- 
 tion, by breaking a new way for the lava 
 through its hardened walls. The temperature 
 at which lava continues fluid is considerable 
 enough to melt glass and silver, and has been 
 found to melt a certain mass of lead in four 
 minutes, which it required double that time to 
 melt when laid on red-hot iron. 
 
 Streams of lava are long in changing their 
 character. You may read in Rollin's History 
 that the Carthaginian army advancing against 
 Syracuse, 392 B.C., were stopped by a stream 
 of lava flowing into the sea from a recent 
 eruption of Etna, and compelled to go round 
 the mountain. That very stream is still dis- 
 
LAVA. 227 
 
 tinctly traceable, two miles wide and twenty- 
 four miles long, and has a partial coating of 
 vegetable mould. A scattered forest now 
 growing on it, called the Bosco di Aci, contains 
 many large trees. It is apparent, also, that this 
 stream covered other lavas of a still more 
 ancient date. Stromboli has been recorded as 
 in unceasing activity for the last two thousand 
 years. Its lava never flows out of the top, 
 but always through a side fissure into the sea. 
 
 "When lava is quite cold," said Edward, 
 "how does it change into such different sub- 
 stances as those Mr. T sent us ? Obsidian 
 
 looks like glass ; pitch-stone resembles granite 
 dipped in resin ; basalt is a hard, black rock ; 
 and cinders and pumice-stone are brittle 
 enough to powder in my fingers." 
 
 Mr. Goodman remarked that the mere situa- 
 tion and circumstances of different portions of 
 the same stream of lava would naturally cause 
 it to exhibit various appearances from the 
 iifferent times and places of its cooling. That 
 cooled from a perfectly melted state, under 
 great pressure and out of reach of the atmo- 
 sphere, becomes obsidian, or volcanic glass. 
 It is called obsidian merely because Obsidius 
 was the name of an Ethiopian who brought it 
 
228 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 first from his country to Kome in Pliny's time. 
 It consists of silica, alumina, potash and oxide 
 of iron, and is, you see, completely vitrified, as 
 if made at the glass-works. A volcano is, in 
 fact, a vast natural glass-manufactory, using the 
 ordinary materials employed in glass-works. 
 Obsidian is of various colours, but chiefly 
 black or very dark green. If you examine a 
 fragment of your's through the microscope, it 
 seems quite clear, except the tiny air-bubbles 
 such as we see in glass, for it really is natural 
 glass, and in small specimens is quite undis- 
 tinguishable from that of the glass-house. In 
 Mexico and Peru, obsidian is used for hatchets, 
 adzes and other cutting-instruments, as well 
 as ring-stones and other ornaments; and in 
 Egypt the priests used it for sacrifices long 
 after metal knives were invented. 
 
 Here is some more lava, said Mr. Goodman, 
 (picking out a piece,) looking like gray marble, 
 only the markings are more spotted and 
 circular than those of marble generally are. 
 That is lava cooled slowly and quietly, and 
 crystallized. The markings are caused by the 
 different substances mingling with it, a little 
 metal in some lavas, olivine, leucite, mica, or 
 quartz in others, with a large proportion of 
 
LAVA. 229 
 
 felspar, or augite. A predominance of felspar 
 produces light-coloured lava; of augite, darker 
 shades. These lavas are hard enough to 
 be quarried and used for building-purposes. 
 Many varieties will take a, high polish, and 
 are pretty enough to be carved into ornaments, 
 tables and boxes. 
 
 Alice observed that they had a little book 
 made of lava from Pompeii. 
 
 Mr. Goodman remarked that the streets of 
 ancient Pompeii were paved with blocks of 
 lava, and many of its houses were built of the 
 same materials ; while the city of Herculaneum 
 is completely imbedded in the stony mass ; for, 
 as it stood nearer the volcano, it received the 
 hottest and most completely melted lava. The 
 city of Clermont, in Middle France, is built of 
 black lava, and has the appearance of a city 
 in mourning for some public calamity. Many 
 lavas exactly resemble, in colour, marking 
 and texture, the slags of iron and copper 
 smelting-furnaces, and dispose themselves in 
 heaps of singular form. The colours, black, 
 ash-coloured, gray, blue, or greenish, depend 
 on the admixture of metals. All these com- 
 pact or vitreous lavas will strike fire; some, 
 especially the dark portions, are magnetic; and 
 20 
 
230 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 all will melt into the same kind of opaque 
 glass. 
 
 Those lumps of half-burnt stuff full of holes 
 are specimens of cellular lava, and appear to 
 have been heated only enough to expel the 
 fixed air contained within the clayey particles. 
 These holes, or cells, are now often filled with 
 
 quartz, agate, or carbonate of lime which has 
 percolated into them and been crystallized 
 there. Sometimes they are almond-shaped, 
 and, when hard enough to be cut and polished 
 as a solid stone, it is called amygdaloid, from 
 the Greek word amygdala, an almond. Be- 
 sides lava, great quantities of scoriae, or cin- 
 
LAVA. 231 
 
 ders, are usually produced and ejected during 
 volcanic eruptions. They are either black, 
 brown, reddish, or gray, and, except for the 
 occasional traces of metal, scarcely differ from 
 the cinders of common furnaces. Indeed, 
 glass and metal slags exhibit just these dif- 
 ferences, according as they are cooled quickly 
 or slowly, under pressure or exposed to wind 
 and weather. 
 
 Lava decomposes under the influence of the 
 atmosphere, and becomes a fertile soil : hence 
 the luxuriance of the vineyards in volcanic 
 regions. The same fertility is seen when the 
 slag of our furnaces has been decomposed by 
 the like cause. 
 
 Fine dust and ashes are frequently pro- 
 jected from volcanic craters in vast quan- 
 tities, so as not only to overwhelm the neigh- 
 bouring regions, but the lighter particles are 
 often carried hundreds of miles. Sir Stam- 
 ford Raffles describes a fall of ashes and dust 
 from the volcano of Tomboro, in Sumbawa, in 
 1815, as destroying substantial houses forty 
 miles off. The eruption was attended with 
 such loud reports as to attract attention at 
 Macassar, two hundred and seventeen miles dis- 
 tant, where it was supposed that pirates were 
 
232 VOLCANIC PEODUCTIONS. 
 
 fighting. A ship with troops was despatched to 
 look after them. This ship soon became en- 
 veloped in " showers of light dust, which so ob- 
 scured the light that at mid-day it was impos- 
 sible to see the hand when held close to the 
 face;" and the ship's progress was impeded by 
 the cinders, pumice and burnt trees and logs 
 floating on the water. The dust penetrated 
 every part of the ship, lying in heaps a foot 
 thick on the deck. It had a faint smell, but 
 was perfectly tasteless, and when moistened 
 formed a tenacious mud, very difficult to wash 
 off. It was therefore a very disagreeable 
 shower to encounter. 
 
 Sometimes, when boiling lava is projected 
 high into the air, (as is frequent in Kirauea,) 
 the wind catches it and cools it in thin sheets, 
 or spins it out into delicate fibres, so that it 
 lies like mown grass. The natives call this 
 the hair of Pe'le', the goddess who, they be- 
 lieve, presides over this volcano. Sometimes 
 this lava falls amidst forests, and hangs from 
 the branches in the form of stalactites. 
 
 When gathered in fibrous masses, it is called 
 pumice-stone, which is used in the arts for 
 polishing metal, wood, pasteboard and stone, 
 and for smoothing parchment. It is con- 
 
SULPHUR. 233 
 
 tinually used, too, by practical philosopher? 
 and chemists, for getting ink or any stains off 
 the hands, and it generally makes them feel 
 soft and smooth. Its fibrous make fits it for 
 gently scraping off the outer skin, and, with it, 
 any adhering stains. Pumice is so abundant 
 in the Lipari Islands as to be quarried in 
 large flakes, which are used for roofing ; and 
 puzzulana, a sort of half-burnt earth found 
 very extensively in Italy, France, England 
 and many other countries, seems to have been 
 projected from volcanoes, and is useful for 
 building under water. Powdered, it is valued 
 as a cement for lighthouses, &c., as it suddenly 
 hardens when mixed with lime and water, and 
 is extremely durable even when constantly 
 wetted afterwards. 
 
 Mr. Goodman went on to say that brim- 
 stone, or sulphur, comes from volcanoes too, 
 of which he had brought some specimens from 
 the souffriere at Montserrat. It is found 
 most abundantly in volcanic regions, espe- 
 cially where the volcanoes are still active. It 
 occurs either as an efflorescence or powder 
 sprinkled on the surface of the ground, or in 
 masses mingled with clay, ashes and other 
 volcanic products. In Sicily there are mines 
 
 20* 
 
234 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 of sulphur, whence it is exported in large 
 square blocks. Great quantities, too, are 
 obtained from the crater of an ancient vol- 
 cano near Naples, called the Solfatara, where 
 the ground appears perfectly yellow with it. 
 In Iceland, mountains are composed entirely 
 of clay and sulphur, the surface of which is 
 covered with a beautiful crust of crystallized 
 sulphur, varying from a quarter of an inch 
 to several inches in thickness, under which 
 wooden planks are sometimes found covered 
 with crystals ; but steam and vapours prevent 
 examination to any great depth. In Armenia 
 the natives shoot down masses of volcanic 
 sulphur from the tall cliffs inaccessible to the 
 foot and hand of man. 
 
 Sulphur is' also obtained, by collecting it as 
 vapour, from many melted minerals. As it 
 cools, the sulphur descends in a fine powder, 
 or adheres in crystals to any convenient sub- 
 stance. When it is thus artificially procured, 
 the process is termed subliming. Sulphur is 
 used in Britain for making gunpowder, cin- 
 nabar and sulphuric acid, and for bleaching 
 straw. It is also used medicinally. Twenty 
 thousand tons are annually imported for our 
 supply. Reports respecting recent eruptions 
 
PITCH-STONE. 235 
 
 of lava from Vesuvius mention many inte- 
 resting deposits of sulphuric efflorescence, as 
 well as great quantities of muriate of soda, or 
 common salt, which seems always rapidly 
 formed during volcanic activity. 
 
 Pitch- stone is a variety of lava composed of 
 felspar and augite, and generally has a green- 
 ish tinge and shining hue, as if varnished. 
 Under the microscope it glitters like granite. 
 It more nearly resembles basalt, and is by 
 some considered as an intermediate stage 
 towards that hard rock. 
 
 "Oh, Edward," exclaimed Alice, "there 
 was a piece of basalt in the box, and we 
 
 thought Mr. T must have sent it by 
 
 mistake for some volcanic cinder." 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that it was no mis- 
 take; for, since the effects of volcanic heat 
 have been more extensively watched, it seems 
 to explain the origin of many rocks which 
 had formerly greatly puzzled inquirers ; and 
 many of these, among which are basalt and 
 trap, are now considered to be of igneous form- 
 ation, that is, to have been melted under 
 great heat. Many interesting experiments 
 have been tried by melting basalt and cooling 
 it either quickly into glass or slowly into 
 
236 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 stone. By adding carbonate of lime, slates 
 and shales have thus been converted into 
 excellent pumice-stone. 
 
 The trap or, in German, trapp rocks are 
 so called from the German word treppe, a 
 stair, because they generally occur in a series 
 of steps or terraces, accounted for by con- 
 sidering them as successive streams of molten 
 rock hardened over one another and eroded 
 so as to terminate in abrupt descents. 
 
 All the basalts and traps consist chiefly of 
 silica, although other substances mingle in 
 them in small proportions. They seem to have 
 acquired their peculiar aspect, so different from 
 that of modern lavas, from having cooled under 
 water or been forced into other strata while 
 excluded from the air. Some of the varieties 
 of greenstone, whinstone and millstone are 
 valuable on account of their hardness, either 
 for grinding metals and corn, or for building 
 and paving, and when well broken, they make 
 excellent macadamized roads. They are as dura- 
 ble as granite, though, from their close grain 
 and dingy colour, not nearly so pretty. Basalt 
 occurs in many parts of the world among 
 ancient igneous rocks, forming the isolated 
 caps of hills, and resting upon other rocks, as 
 
BASALT. 
 
 237 
 
 if it were part of some great sheet, the most 
 of which has been destroyed. The largest 
 space it occupies continuously seems to be in 
 India, where there are outspreading rocks of 
 it covering an area of two hundred thousand 
 square miles. 
 
 VOLCANIC DIKE. 
 
 PORTION OF THE DIKE, SHOWING 
 ITS BASALTIC PRISMS. 
 
 These specimens, by their labels, come from 
 the Giants' Causeway in Ireland, and from 
 Fingal's Cave, at Staffa, in the Hebrides ; but 
 they look very much alike ; and, indeed, those 
 localities are both remarkable, for their long 
 ranges of regular-shaped columns. Similar 
 basaltic columns are found in a valley of the Vi- 
 varais, in the south of France, and near Vicenza, 
 in Italy, and seem to have been caused by a kind 
 
238 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 of coarse crystallization, owing to the slowness 
 with which the melted basalt cooled. Some 
 of these columns are upright, and appear 
 jointed as accurately as if by the stonemason's 
 rule ; qthers are curved as if they had crys- 
 tallized while in motion. They are also occa- 
 sionally seen in horizontal layers, as the 
 chimney of St. Helena, sixty-four feet high, 
 which is evidently a portion of some narrow 
 dike of similar formation. 
 
 CHEESE-GROTTO. 
 
 Sometimes the basalt assumes the form of a 
 perfect globe, so that the rock seems made of a 
 pile of cannon-balls ; in other instances these 
 balls are flattened, and stand one upon another, 
 like a pile of cheeses, as is the case with the 
 
BASALT. 239 
 
 pillars of the cheese-grotto between Treves 
 and Coblentz. Many other rocks assume this 
 globular form. Greenstone and pitch-stone 
 sometimes exhibit it when decomposing. On 
 Ascension Island, and in one of the Ponga 
 
 GLOBIFORM PITCH-STONE. 
 
 Islands of the Mediterranean, are rocks full 
 of these balls, varying in size from a few 
 inches to three feet in diameter, some of 
 which, after exposure to the weather for a 
 short time, will scale off at a touch into nume- 
 rous concentric coats, like those of an onion, 
 enclosing a compact nucleus in the middle; 
 but a few harder blows will make this too 
 shell or scale off like the outside. Those in 
 Ascension Island have a compact, hard shell, 
 with a hollow interior, and are called volcanic 
 
240 
 
 VOLCANIC PBODUCTIONS. 
 
 bombs. The river Flu via, in Spain, cuts 
 through a bed of ancient lava to the depth of 
 about one hundred and thirty feet. On the 
 edge of the precipice stands the town of Gas- 
 sell Follit. The cliff is so abrupt that its 
 
 SECTION OF CASSELL FOLLIT. 
 
 composition is easily visible, and it seems that 
 the lava immediately under the town is sco- 
 riaceous or cindery; under that is spheroid 
 basalt, that is, basalt in a globular form. 
 Beneath this is a more compact basalt, with 
 crystals of olivine. There are five distinct 
 layers of basalt in all, the uppermost sphe- 
 roid, the rest prismatic or columnar, each 
 separated by thinner layers more compact. 
 
BASALT. 241 
 
 Most probably they were formed by suc- 
 cessive flows of lava, either during the erup- 
 tion, or at different periods. The whole mass 
 rests upon alluvium, ten or twelve feet thick, 
 consisting of pebbles of limestone and quartz, 
 but without any mixture of the igneous rocks, 
 which mingle, however, in the modern gravel 
 of the same river. 
 
 We have in the United States innumerable 
 trap dikes, such as Mounts Tom and Holyoke at 
 Northampton, in Massachusetts, East Rock at 
 New Haven, the Palisades of the Hudson, and 
 a hundred other hills, almost deserving the name 
 of mountains, along the belt of country occupied 
 by the red sandstone of Newark and Norris- 
 town. At first there seems to be some close 
 connection between this kind of rock and the 
 trap dikes. But we find multitudes of little 
 dikes penetrating the country on each side, the 
 Highlands or Blue Ridge, and the Philadel- 
 phia, and Baltimore and Richmond hills, to the 
 southeast. In the iron -mines of New Jersey 
 and Pennsylvania small straight walls of green- 
 stone trap are left exposed, standing at inter- 
 vals across the pits. But the trap hills of the 
 New Red country seem to have been formed 
 by this ancient lava having lifted up the 
 
 Q 21 
 
242 VOLCANIC PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 layers and flowed out sideways. When their 
 edges were washed away, the prismatic crystals 
 of lava, much ruder and larger than those of 
 the Giants' Causeway, were left to show them- 
 selves ; and when the sun is right for it, these 
 are to be grandly seen, like mighty columns, 
 upon the face of the Palisades. 
 
 Great outbursts of trap accompany the 
 copper-ores of Lake Superior ; and many 
 more occur in Canada. Trap is a very com- 
 mon rock in the great West beyond the Kocky 
 Mountains, where it lies in level sheets, form- 
 ing mountain-terraces. 
 
 Edward asked what would happen if hot 
 lava passed through or over any rock that 
 was easily changed by heat. 
 
 That has been thought of and investigated, 
 said Mr. Goodman; and great changes have 
 been observed. For instance, a greenstone 
 dike, or vein, passing through a bed of coal in 
 Antrim, has reduced it to a cinder for the 
 space of nine feet on either side. At Cockfield 
 Fell, in the north of England, a similar change 
 is observable near a dike of trap, the coals 
 near to it being perfect coke, while those 
 immediately touching it are converted into a 
 substance resembling soot. At Salisbury 
 
VOLCANOES. 243 
 
 Crag, near Edinburgh, a sandstone which 
 comes in contact with greenstone is changed 
 into a sort of jasper. In other places, chalk 
 has been changed into fine marble, red sand- 
 stone into hornstone, clay-slate into flinty 
 slate, by the heat of some melted rock which 
 has intruded into those substances ; and these 
 changes have exhibited every stage of progress, 
 from the distinct materials on either side, to 
 the unchanged molten rock in the centre of 
 the dike. These changes are easily under- 
 stood by any one who has watched the effects 
 of fire and heat in potteries or glass and 
 metal furnaces, or of heated and acid waters 
 in chemists' vats. 
 
 It seems likely that volcanoes must have 
 existed almost everywhere in the world at 
 some time or other, since so many different 
 rocks are produced by their influence ; and now, 
 if you will just take a map of the world, and 
 mark out with any colour the regions where 
 volcanoes are known to be still active, you 
 will be astonished to find the long line of 
 vents you must mark on the edges of the 
 continents, not only on the side of the Atlantic 
 Ocean, but thickly scattered in both the In- 
 dian and Pacific Oceans; while if you use a 
 
244 VOLCANIC PKODUCTIONS. 
 
 second colour, to distinguish the regions of 
 extinct volcanic action, you will add a large 
 portion of Europe, Asia Minor, Persia, and the 
 Holy Land; and in China the natural springs 
 of gas and naphtha induce the belief that 
 volcanic action was formerly powerful there. 
 
 All the young people were struck with this 
 remark, and declared they would make maps 
 of that sort for their own gratification. 
 
 Mr. Goodman remarked that tuff, tufa and 
 trass are other stones, produced by the con- 
 cretion of the ashes, or fine powder, ejected 
 from volcanoes, and falling either into the sea 
 or on the earth, where it gradually becomes, 
 by the influence of the weather, hardened into 
 masses firm enough to take a beautiful polish. 
 Sometimes they contain shells, and are then 
 accounted more curious and valuable. Many 
 garnets, agates and other pretty stones are 
 formed in volcanic regions, and are sold at 
 Naples as gems from Vesuvius. They gene- 
 rally consist of silica and alumina, and are not 
 essentially different from Oriental precious 
 stones. Many gases generally escape when 
 volcanoes are in eruption. From the mingling 
 of these water is often formed, which, descend- 
 ing in showers of hot rain, transforms the 
 
VOLCANOES. 245 
 
 lava into mud. Noxious vapours, called mo- 
 fetes, frequently break out from old lavas 
 before new eruptions occur. These vapours 
 often fill the wells and pits in the neighbour- 
 hood, and so affect the throat and nostrils that 
 they soon prove fatal to men or animals im- 
 bibing them. 
 
 With regard to the fire that supplies the vol- 
 canoes, various conjectures have been formed 
 on the subject, and many interesting experi- 
 ments tried, to prove whether there is any 
 store of fire in the centre of the earth, or 
 whether volcanic combustion arises from the 
 meeting of gases usually kept apart; but 
 nothing is yet ascertained. Believers in reve- 
 lation, however, know from God's word that 
 the element of fire, unmanageable as it is by 
 men in any volume, is under the perfect con- 
 trol of its great Creator; and, having his own 
 assurance of his superintending care and pro- 
 tection, we may feel perfectly safe in his keep- 
 ing; for even if this earth and all that is 
 therein should be burned up, and melt with 
 fervent heat, there will remain the promised 
 new earth and new heaven, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness, and where all true believers in 
 the Saviour will be in safety and peace forever. 
 21* 
 
246 GEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 GEMS. 
 
 A VALUABLE cabinet of minerals was left as 
 a legacy to a friend of Mr. Goodman's, and 
 his young people were soon invited to inspect 
 it, when they rejoiced in the opportunity of 
 seeing many specimens of which hitherto 
 they had only read. One compartment con- 
 tained a brilliant collection of gems, at which 
 Alice exclaimed, 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. B , why do you not have 
 
 those beautiful things set in gold, and wear 
 them as ornaments?" 
 
 "Nay, my dear," she replied: "they would- 
 then only be trinkets for my personal orna- 
 ment. Now, collected here and seen in their 
 native simplicity, they are more useful as 
 specimens of God's abundant power and 
 bounty in forming objects of such beauty 
 even under ground; for they are but stones, 
 valued chiefly for their rarity, or the dif- 
 
GEMS. 247 
 
 ficulty of raising them from their hidden 
 homes." 
 
 This remark made a great impression upon 
 Alice; and she failed not to repeat it to her 
 father in her glowing description of Mrs. 
 B 's gems. 
 
 Mr. Goodman rejoined that these glittering 
 jewels are but stones; yet their natural 
 beauty is so admirable, their durability so 
 prolonged, and the difficulty of obtaining 
 them so great, that in all ages of the world 
 they have been accounted precious by man, 
 and represent wealth in small compass. Even 
 the patriarch Job speaks of "the precious 
 onyx, the crystal, the sapphire, the ruby, and 
 the topaz of Ethiopia," as ornaments of the 
 highest price for the " jewels" and "diadems" 
 of his day. (Job xxviii. 16-19.) Every collec- 
 tion of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities 
 proves that the twelve varieties of gems set 
 in the Jewish high-priest's breastplate (Exod. 
 xxviii. 17, 20) were well known, and compara- 
 tively abundant, in the earliest periods of civil- 
 ization; while Tyre (Ezek. xxviii. 13) traded 
 in diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, the sardius, 
 onyx, topaz, beryl, jasper and carbuncle, not 
 only for ornament, but use; and Jeremiah's 
 
248 GEMS. 
 
 assertion (xvii. 1) that "the sin of Judah was 
 written with the point of a diamond/' indi- 
 cates that a pen, or writing-style, of such 
 material, was not uncommon. 
 
 Edward inquired whether these stones are 
 found in mines and veins, like metals, remark- 
 ing that he had read of diamond-mines. 
 
 Mr. Goodman said that there are diamond- 
 mines, certainly ; but they are found very fre- 
 quently in detached geodes, or hollow nodules 
 of agate, enclosing crystals of various sorts, 
 or only a drop of water or morsel of bitumen. 
 The diamond geodes are generally in the 
 rocky regions of tropical countries only. 
 Brazil and Golconda have hitherto yielded 
 the principal specimens, though lately some 
 have been found in the Uralian Mountains of 
 the more temperate zone. Some diamonds have 
 been found in North and South Carolina, in 
 connection with a very curious sandstone 
 called Itacolumite, which can be bent, and 
 even stretched like India-rubber, a very 
 small distance, feeling to the hand as if its 
 grains of sand were jointed or hooked into 
 each other. The largest (supposed) diamond ever 
 found in the United States, weighing twenty- 
 four carats, was said to be found in the gravel 
 
DIAMONDS. 249 
 
 near Richmond. The alluvial deposit of 
 gravel and sand on the river Jenquetinhonha, 
 in Brazil, contains so many of these gems 
 that regular works are established for wash- 
 ing them out of it. The largest ever known 
 was found there, (if it is indeed a genuine 
 diamond,) and belongs to the sovereign of 
 Portugal: it weighs sixteen hundred and 
 eighty carats. A carat weighs four grains : 
 consequently this diamond must weigh more 
 than eleven ounces. 
 
 The next in value was found in India, and 
 was formerly the eye of an idol in Malabar, 
 from which it was stolen by a French soldier, 
 and, after passing through several hands, was 
 eventually, in 1776, purchased for the Em- 
 peror of Russia, and now adorns the sceptre 
 of that country. Four large uncut diamonds 
 formed the clasp of Charlemagne's cloak. 
 
 The famous Koh-i-noor diamond was one 
 curiosity at the Great Exhibition of 1851; 
 but most people were disappointed in its ap- 
 pearance. However, much depended upon 
 the time of day and sort of weather in which 
 it was examined: its beauty was most ap- 
 parent between two and three o'clock, when 
 the sun's rays fell upon it. This " mountain 
 
250 GEMS. 
 
 of light/' as its name implies, belonged to 
 Eunjeet Sing, and was deemed so valuable 
 that, when worn, other jewels were dispensed 
 with. It was given up to the East India 
 Company for the Queen of England when the 
 Punjaub was surrendered, and, in its rough 
 state, appeared to be only a portion about 
 one-third of the original crystal. Tavernier, 
 a French traveller to India in 1676, describes 
 the Koh-i-noor of his day as weighing much 
 more and being broken or cut into separate 
 pieces. Two diamonds, one in Coochan, and 
 the great Russian diamond I just mentioned, 
 so singularly correspond with the one exhi- 
 bited in 1851, that it is considered by com- 
 petent judges as not improbable that they 
 once formed the one great crystal described 
 by Tavernier. 
 
 The Queen's Koh-i-noor diamond has been 
 successfully cut and polished, an operation 
 which occupied thirty-eight days, with twelve 
 hours' work per day, without intermission. 
 There were one or two flaws which it was 
 desirable to remove; and some parts of the 
 stone were so extremely hard that in six 
 hours' time, with the wheel revolving two 
 thousand four hundred times per minute, 
 
DIAMONDS. 
 
 251 
 
 scarcely any progress was made; and the 
 diamond became so hot from the friction that 
 it melted the pewter setting which held it; 
 
 KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND BEFORE CUTTING. 
 
 UPPER SURFACE. 
 
 AFTER CUTTING. 
 
 UNDER SURFACE. 
 
 and the mill itself was so heated that 
 particles of iron mixed with the diamond- 
 powder and oil became ignited.* The dia- 
 
 * Report from Messrs. Garrard, the lapidaries, 1852. 
 
252 GEMS. 
 
 mond itself, suspended between supporters to 
 show the facets on both sides, is lodged among 
 the crown jewels in the Tower of London, while 
 models of it in its former and present state are 
 deposited in the British Museum. It looks 
 much smaller now that it is cut. The figures 
 show its exact size both before and since the 
 operation. 
 
 Generally diamonds lose about half their 
 weight in cutting; and the dust and refuse 
 are worth fifty pounds an ounce. The beauty 
 of diamonds is not visible when first dug out 
 of the earth, from the yellowish or reddish 
 crust which adheres so firmly to them that it 
 is separated with difficulty. The most purely 
 transparent are deemed the best; though the 
 deep red, yellow, and blue, or green, are 
 highly esteemed. There are also black and 
 brown diamonds; but they are more curious 
 than pretty. 
 
 Diamonds are almost the hardest of all pre- 
 cious stones, and are by some supposed to be 
 the "adamant" of the ancients. They can be 
 cut and polished only by diamond-dust. Small 
 ones, called natural sparks, are found abun- 
 dantly in the sand of the river Gonal, which 
 
DIAMONDS. 253 
 
 runs from high mountains into the river 
 Ganges. When its waters have subsided and 
 cleared after the heavy rains of December, 
 the whole population search for diamonds. 
 The most promising spot is selected, when the 
 sand is dammed up and carefully examined, 
 all the labourers being watched, to prevent the 
 gems being swallowed, which is the usual 
 method of concealing them. All work without 
 clothes. It is said that in ten thousand dia- 
 monds only one is found weighing more than 
 twenty carats, as, though numerous, they are 
 generally exceedingly small. 
 
 Diamonds are distinguished from other 
 gems pretty accurately by their hardness, 
 form of crystal, and other properties, also by 
 their chemical composition. Each gem crystal- 
 lizes in certain forms exclusively, so that 
 frequently its form at once determines its 
 nature: when found in various shapes, they 
 are usually parts of the original or perfect 
 figure. The diamond when rubbed phos- 
 phorizes, and becomes positively electrical, 
 and is therefore a non-conductor of electricity ; 
 when heated without the contact of air, it 
 
 suffers no change; but, if ignited in contact 
 22 
 
254 GEMS. 
 
 with air, it is totally converted into carbonic 
 acid gas. 
 
 " Isn't that very strange ?" said Edward. 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that in this respect it 
 differs from all other gems. Chemists have 
 proved that it actually consists of crystallized 
 carbon, and therefore is naturally consumed 
 by fire, while other gems resist its influence, 
 and are often recovered from the ashes after 
 fires have destroyed the jewel-boxes. 
 
 Alice asked if the chemists can turn carbon 
 into diamonds. 
 
 They have not yet entirely succeeded, though 
 they have produced very beautiful crystals. The 
 peculiar brilliancy of the diamond is owing to 
 its great power of reflecting light. It writes 
 on glass, as you know, and scratches all 
 known minerals. Hence, glaziers use it for 
 cutting window-panes. The black, dirty and 
 imperfect diamonds are powdered for grind- 
 ing and polishing other gems ; and small por- 
 tions are used as pivots for the delicate wheel- 
 work of watches. The Hindoos value dia- 
 monds, and some other gems, as charms, be- 
 yond all money price; and they are pierced, 
 and worn about the person as talismans to 
 preserve from lightning, to avert danger, 
 
DIAMONDS. 255 
 
 dispel melancholy, or inspire courage and insure 
 honour and riches.* 
 
 Diamonds are found in certain particular, 
 though diversified, forms. Sometimes they are 
 in rolled pieces, which of course need cutting 
 or grinding into shape. They also occur in 
 fourteen variations of crystals, either cubic, 
 pyramidal, or octahedral. They are generally 
 cut, either by sawing with a very fine saw of 
 soft iron, while the diamond is kept well 
 moistened with diamond-dust and vinegar, or 
 they are ground on a fine wheel, which is 
 worked at the cutter's discretion; but it is 
 always a very slow process. 
 
 The other precious stones, such as rubies, 
 sapphires, emeralds, &c., may all be divided into 
 two classes, aluminous and siliceous stones, 
 or those consisting chiefly of alumina, varied 
 by small proportions of other substances, and 
 those made of silica, that is, flint, with similar 
 or different mixtures of other matter; and 
 they are found, like the diamond, in detached 
 nodules, in alluvium or earthy beds. 
 
 * See "Oriental Accounts of the Precious Minerals." 
 Translated by Raja Kalikishen, with Remarks by James 
 Princep, F.R.S., in the "Journal of Asiatic Society of 
 Bengal." Calcutta, 1832. 
 
256 GEMS. 
 
 Out of these two classes of gems, the alu- 
 minous stones coinprise perhaps (next to the 
 diamond) those on which men set the highest 
 price; and the most precious of these are the 
 Oriental sapphire, ruby and topaz. I mention 
 these together, because they really are varieties 
 of the same thing, corundum, consisting 
 almost entirely of alumina, with a little lime 
 and oxide of iron; but the proportions differ 
 slightly with the colour. Sapphires are found 
 amidst gravel near trap rocks in Bohemia, 
 Saxony and France, Scotland and the East 
 Indies ; but the most beautiful come from the 
 Capelan Mountains of Pegu. They occur in 
 blunt-edged pieces, roundish pebbles, or crystal- 
 lized in various pyramidal forms. The colours 
 are blue, red, gray, white, green and yellow. 
 Next to the diamond, the blue sapphire is the 
 hardest substance in nature. When heated, it 
 becomes snow-white, and exhibits so great a 
 degree of lustre that it is often substituted for 
 diamonds. The sapphire was one of the stones 
 in the high-priest's breastplate, and is men- 
 tioned in Revelation as one of the foundation- 
 stones of the holy city. It is frequently spoken 
 of in the Scriptures, not only as a precious stone 
 for jewels, but as the most splendid article for 
 
SAPPHIRE. 257 
 
 thrones and pavements : so that learned men 
 suppose that two substances were intended by 
 the Hebrews under the ancient and general 
 name of sapphire. 
 
 The other substance which may be meant 
 is the blue stone called lapis lazuli, found in 
 veins of the rocks of China, Persia, Bucharia 
 and Lake Baikal. This was highly valued in 
 Egypt for toys and ornaments, and was often 
 used in mosaic- work for the walls and floors 
 of palaces, as noticed in Exodus xxiv. 10, 
 where it is said that Moses and the seventy 
 elders "saw the God of Israel; and there was 
 under his feet a paved work of a sapphire 
 stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his 
 clearness," Now, our sapphire is never found 
 except in small crystals, while lapis lazuli, or 
 azure stone, occurs in large slabs, suited for 
 costly pavement, and is, moreover, an opaque 
 sky-blue, interspersed with gold points, which 
 gives a peculiar aptitude to its comparison with 
 the starry heavens by Ezekiel, (chap. x. 1.) 
 This description really adds much to the 
 beauty of the allusion; or rather, a know- 
 ledge of the substance referred to shows the 
 appropriateness of the figure. 
 
 Lapis lazuli consists of nearly equal parts 
 
 R 22* 
 
258 GEMS. 
 
 of silica and alumina, and a considerable por- 
 tion of soda, with a little sulphur. It has 
 been used to form a brilliant blue paint from 
 very early times, and was the costly ultra- 
 marine of the middle ages. Ultramarine is 
 now produced artificially so cheaply that as 
 much can be purchased for twenty-five cents 
 as formerly cost twenty dollars. 
 
 But the blue crystal sapphire was a gem 
 also known to the ancients, and was, most 
 likely, that used for the high-priest's breast- 
 plate, as it is more suited for engraving than 
 the softer lapis lazuli. Sapphires are prefer- 
 able to rubies for jewelling watches, on account 
 of their uniform hardness. Some are varie- 
 gated in colour, half red and half green, or 
 striped with yellow. When very pale, they are 
 termed white sapphires. The asterias, or 
 star-stone, is a beautiful variety of sapphire, 
 exhibiting a rayed opalescent lustre. 
 
 Rubies are considered very beautiful, as 
 well as valuable. They are composed of the 
 same material as sapphires, but are not quite 
 so hard. They are prized for their deep-red 
 colour. "Polished as sapphires," "ruddy as 
 rubies," the prophet Jeremiah describes the 
 Nazarites in their prosperity. (Lam. iv. 7.) 
 
TOPAZ. 259 
 
 The carbuncle, nearly purple ; spinel, corn- 
 poppy scarlet; balas, pale red, inclining to 
 violet; and the rubicele, of a reddish yellow, 
 are all considered varieties of the ruby. The 
 ruby in the English crown, about the size of 
 a walnut, was brought from Spain by Edward 
 the Black Prince. One hundred and eight 
 are mentioned in the throne of the Great 
 Mogul, weighing from one hundred to two 
 hundred carats, and one round one weighs two 
 and a half ounces; but a ruby weighing only 
 six carats, or twenty-four grains, is, if perfect, 
 often valued at one thousand guineas. 
 
 The topaz has a small admixture of fluoric 
 acid in its composition, and is naturally of a 
 brilliant yellow, but can be changed by heat 
 to rose red, violet blue, or white, but then it 
 loses its transparency. It is so abundant as 
 to give its name to the topaz mountain rock, 
 of which the mineral forms a part. Occasion- 
 ally it is found in granite ; and nests of topaz 
 have been discovered in clay-slate, or in veins 
 with tin-stone; but the best occur in large 
 crystals of oblique prism-shape, amidst the 
 alluvial soil of granite districts. The East 
 Indies yield the finest topazes, being no other 
 than the yellow sapphires already mentioned. 
 
260 GEMS. 
 
 Next in value are those from Brazil and 
 Peru. Inferior topazes are common in Si- 
 beria, Saxony, Bohemia and Scotland. In 
 Scotland a yellow or brownish quartz, called 
 cairngorm, from the mountain of that name, 
 is much used for seals, brooches, rings, &c. 
 Crystals of topaz refract double. 
 
 Emery is bluish-gray corundum mixed with 
 iron, and derives its name from Cape Emeri, 
 in the Isle of Naxos, whence it was first 
 brought. It is used for polishing iron and 
 steel. It will interest you to look at some 
 emery-powder through the microscope. 
 
 Several other gems are composed chiefly of 
 alumina; for instance, the garnet is alumina, 
 with nearly equal proportions of silica and 
 oxide of iron, crystallized in three different 
 forms, pyramidal, dodecahedral and prismatic, 
 and yielding fourteen varieties of garnet, each of 
 which is distinguished by some name indicating 
 its colour, locality, or origin. The precious 
 or noble garnet is a dark ' bluish-red. The 
 finest come from Pegu; but many are found in 
 the northern countries of Europe, generally 
 in small crystal grains, though occasionally in 
 masses. It melts to a cinder under the blow- 
 pipe, and is not very valuable. The coarser 
 
VESUVIAN. 261 
 
 kinds are used for beads, or even ; as emery, 
 for polishing metals and gems. 
 
 Vesuvian is a species of garnet found in 
 abundance among the unaltered rocks ej.ected 
 from the volcano : it is green or brown. 
 Egeran, reddish brown ; gehlenite, green, from 
 the Tyrol; pyrope, a blood-red variety; pyr- 
 eneite ; grayish black, from the Pyrenees; 
 grossulare, green; melanite, velvet black; 
 colophonite, orange-red; helrin, wax yellow; 
 and cinnamon-stone, are all varieties of gar- 
 net. Though these stones are of such different 
 colours, they are considered varieties only of 
 the same substance, because their chemical 
 composition is either precisely the same, or 
 only slightly varied by very small admixtures 
 in different proportions of iron or manganese, 
 which produce the different colours. 
 
 Cyanite, or kyanite, is another aluminous 
 gem, with a large proportion of silica and a 
 little iron and potash. It is found in masses 
 as well as in distinct crystals in the granite 
 and mica-slate rocks of the oldest formation, 
 in most countries both of the Old and New 
 World. Its principal colours are Berlin blue, 
 gray and green. Some specimens are quite 
 1 transparent, others very nearly so. In India 
 
262 GEMS. 
 
 it is cut and polished as an inferior sort of 
 sapphire. 
 
 The chrysoberyl is a bright, green gem, 
 usually found in round pieces about the size 
 and colour of a pea, but sometimes in crystals. 
 It consists almost entirely of alumina, with a 
 small proportion of silica, and a very little 
 lime and oxide of iron. It refracts double, 
 and becomes electric by friction. It is found 
 in Brazil, Ceylon, Siberia and Connecticut, 
 and can be so cut as to give twenty-eight 
 facets to the summits of the prism-shaped 
 crystals. 
 
 The pretty blue turquoise is a stone hitherto 
 found only in Persia, where it is highly prized 
 for ornament. It occurs in considerable 
 masses, and in various shapes, among rocks of 
 iron. There is a variety, called bone turquoise, 
 found occasionally in Languedoc, and once 
 supposed to be the tooth of some animal 
 penetrated with copper-ore. It really is com- 
 posed of phosphate of lime (the same material 
 of which bones are made) and oxide of copper; 
 and probably the notion of its being teeth 
 arose from its shape and ivory-looking texture. 
 
 I have not yet mentioned those pretty 
 stones emerald and amethyst, because they, 
 
EMERALD. 263 
 
 with many others, are siliceous gems. The 
 emerald, as a gem, is valued next to the 
 ruby, and consists of about two-thirds of 
 silica, some alumina, and a little lime, 
 glucina, and oxide of chrome, with a very 
 little water. The most beautiful come from 
 Peru and Brazil, where the natives had the 
 wonderful art of drilling holes through them 
 without the use of iron; but an inferior 
 species was known to the ancients long be- 
 fore America was discovered, and seems to 
 have been brought from Egypt and Bombay. 
 Indeed, there is an island of emerald in the 
 Ked Sea. Pliny enumerates twelve varieties 
 of emerald; but some of these were so very 
 large, that he must have included a green spar, 
 or natural glass, such as that of which the cele- 
 brated emerald dish at Rome was made. Theo- 
 phrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, in his treatise 
 on stones, describes one four cubits long and 
 three broad, also an obelisk forty cubits high 
 and from two to four broad, which consisted 
 entirely of four emeralds, as he calls them. 
 The true emerald gem, however, only occurs 
 in s.uch very small crystals that any of the 
 size of a walnut are considered extraordinary 
 specimens. A very large one, weighing eight 
 
264 GEMS. 
 
 ounces eighteen pennyweights, is in the pos- 
 session of the Duke of Devonshire. It came 
 from Granada, and is two inches long and 
 two and a quarter inches in diameter. Here 
 is a drawing of it. At Loretto there is shown 
 a shrine studded with more than one hundred 
 
 DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE'S EMERALD HALF SIZE. 
 
 of these brilliant stones. When heated, eme- 
 ralds change into blue, but recover their 
 natural green colour on cooling; but they do 
 not stand fire well, and under very great heat 
 fuse into white glass. 
 
 Beryls are found in Siberia, France, the 
 United States and Brazil. They differ very 
 little from the emerald except in colour, vary- 
 
AMETHYST. 265 
 
 ing from bluish green to honey yellow, sky- 
 blue, and even brown. Ancient naturalists 
 attributed all sorts of wonderful properties to 
 the beryl, such as keeping people from fall- 
 ing into ambuscades, exciting courage in the 
 fearful, and curing diseases of the eyes and 
 stomach. "It does none of these things 
 now," concludes the quaint historian, "be- 
 cause people are not simple enough to believe 
 it has the virtue to do them." The beryl 
 was one of the stones in the high-priest's 
 breastplate, and is often alluded to in Scrip- 
 ture as in common use, either "in gold rings 
 set with beryls," as Solomon describes, or in 
 brooches and "rows of jewels." It is some- 
 times termed aquamarine. 
 
 The amethyst is a purple or violet coloured 
 gem of remarkable brilliancy. It is pure 
 quartz, and found in both the East and West 
 Indies, Persia, Brazil, and some parts of 
 Europe. It is much used for seals and 
 brooches. Some of the ancient cups and 
 vases were made of it, as it was an opinion 
 among the Persians that wine drunk from such 
 vessels would not intoxicate: hence its name, 
 from the Greek word amethystos, (not intoxi- 
 cating.) Some writers derive its name from 
 
 23 
 
266 GEMS. 
 
 its colour, which resembles that of wine min- 
 gled with water. It also was in the high- 
 priest's breastplate, and is mentioned as one 
 of the foundation-stones of the holy city. 
 
 In the Bible we read of onyx, chalcedony, 
 sardius, jasper, sardonyx, and chrysoprasus, 
 as " precious stones" in ancient times. I 
 think I told you before that agates and chal- 
 cedonies are" both of flinty origin. The 
 pretty pebbles called agates derive their 
 name from the river Achates, in Sicily, where 
 they were first noticed, and where they still 
 abound. They have a considerable mixture 
 of earth in them. Agate is not deemed very 
 valuable, and occurs sometimes in such very 
 large pieces that cups, handles of knives and 
 forks, plates, and chemists' mortars can be 
 made of it. The high altar of Messina is 
 entirely encrusted with agate. It often ex- 
 hibits curious representations of men and 
 animals. One is described by De Boot, in 
 which one side of a circle appears as exact 
 as if drawn by compasses, in the centre of 
 which there is a bishop. Turning the stone 
 round, other men and women appear. Some 
 agates containing the numbers 4191, 1910, 
 &c. are termed arithmetical agates. Agates 
 
AGATE. 267 
 
 were so early used by engravers that they 
 are considered a sort of antique gem, and are 
 now rather more regarded for their history 
 than their beauty. Mr. Layard found many 
 agate, onyx and cornelian cylinders among 
 the ruins of Assyria, some of which were 
 covered with elaborate engraving. 
 
 Many remarkable specimens of agate are 
 preserved in cabinets; and amusing mistakes 
 have occurred in interpreting the figures 
 upon them. For instance, in an ancient 
 church of France, an agate had been pre- 
 served from time immemorial, considered to 
 represent Adam and Eve, with the tree, 
 serpent, &c. ; but on further examination it 
 proved to be Jupiter and Minerva, with a 
 modern inscription in the Eabbinical cha- 
 racter. An onyx agate, set in a ring belong- 
 ing to the Earl of Powis, contains the 
 chrysalis of a moth: so that it seems as if 
 these stones were rather suddenly crystal- 
 lized from a fluid state. The ancient Italian 
 artists were particularly skilful in taking 
 advantage of these natural marks, and worked 
 onyx and agate into those stones called cameo, 
 or camaieu, a name derived from the ancient 
 Oriental word, camebuia, given to those 
 
268 GEMS. 
 
 onyxes having a second colour. The term is 
 now applied to any stone on which there ap- 
 pears a picture in the natural veinings, or 
 which is artificially produced. 
 
 Chalcedony takes its name from the city of 
 Chalcedon, near which it was first noticed 
 and still abounds ; but it is also found in Ice- 
 land, the Faroe Isles, the Scotch Hebrides, 
 the Pentland Hills, and Derbyshire and Corn- 
 wall, in nodules, veins and masses. Chal- 
 cedony consists of pure silica, with a very 
 little water. In colour, there are various 
 shades of white, gray, yellow, brown, green, 
 and blue. It is semi-transparent, and harder 
 than flint : moreover, it will not melt. The 
 green variety is used by jewellers, and termed 
 chrysoprasus. The heliotrope is blood-red, 
 or scarlet. The finest specimens come from 
 Bohemia and Siberia. The true onyx is 
 really a chalcedony composed of white, black 
 and brown layers, so as to exhibit a banded 
 appearance in cutting and polishing. 
 
 Curious stones, called beekites, are found on 
 the shores of Torbay, England, consisting of 
 chalcedony deposited on a nucleus of coral or 
 fragments of limestone. They vary from the 
 size of beans to nodules a foot in diameter, 
 
CORNELIAN. 269 
 
 and, though irregular, are more or less round 
 in shape. The nucleus is often loose enough 
 to rattle, or is in powder. The beekites hith- 
 erto examined occur amidst the conglomerate 
 of ancient beaches formed from the new red 
 sandstone, among the fossils of which corals 
 predominate. They derive their name from 
 Dr. Beeke, who first reported their existence 
 and nature. 
 
 Plasma is a green variety often found 
 among the ruins of Rome. The sarde and 
 sardonyx are also chalcedonies, or, perhaps, 
 more properly, varieties of cornelian, which 
 has a small portion of alumina and oxide of 
 iron added to its large amount of silica. 
 
 Carnelian, or cornelian, is so named from 
 the flesh colour of many specimens, though 
 it is often variegated from pure white, with 
 all shades of yellow and red. It is semi- 
 transparent and very brilliant, softer than 
 chalcedony, and therefore easily fashioned 
 into beads, brooches, seals, rings, &c. The 
 finest come from the East Indies, where they 
 occur as gray or blackish olive nodules in 
 the beds of torrents. After some weeks' ex- 
 posure to the sun, they are subjected to heat 
 in earthen pots, which produces the brilliant 
 
 23* 
 
270 GEMS. 
 
 tints desired by the jeweller. I believo 
 many of these stones have their beauties 
 curiously developed by soaking in oil, and 
 baking or boiling, before they are cut by 
 the lapidary. 
 
 Opal is another very pretty and delicate- 
 looking stone of various aspects. The pre- 
 cious opal is simply silica with a very little 
 water. It is valued for its beautiful play of 
 many colours. It is found in small veins 
 amidst the clay porphyry of Hungary or the 
 trap rocks of Ireland. It is generally trans- 
 lucent ; but some opals become quite transparent 
 when immersed in water: these are called 
 hydrophanes, or changeable opal. They must 
 be quickly withdrawn, however, on becoming 
 transparent, as otherwise the pores soon fill 
 with earthy particles from the water, and 
 the changeable property is lost. There are 
 six other kinds of opal, produced by the addi- 
 tion of oxide of iron in small proportions, 
 namely, the common, or milk-white opal; the 
 fine opal, so named from its brilliant red hue, 
 which is peculiar to Mexico. Central America, 
 especially Honduras, yields the fire-opal in 
 large quantities, in veins. Mother-of-pearl 
 opal, or cacholong, from the river Cach, in 
 
OPALS. 271 
 
 Bucharia, much resembles mother-of-pearl in 
 colour, though not in texture. The semi-opal 
 is white, gray and brown, mingled as spotted, 
 striped, or clouded : this has a little alumina, 
 carbon, ammoniacal water and oil of bitumen 
 in its composition. Silica and oxide of iron, 
 in nearly equal proportions, with a very little 
 water, produce the ferruginous opal, or jasper 
 ore, of scarlet and gray colours. Wood-opal 
 is found in branched pieces of many various 
 shapes. 
 
 Opals change their colour by breaking, 
 and are easily imitated in glass. The ancients 
 had an unaccountable passion for them. The 
 Oriental opal was esteemed double the value 
 of a sapphire of the same size. The senator 
 Nonnius, who possessed the famous opal of 
 Eome, worth twenty thousand sestertii, pre- 
 ferred banishment to selling it to Antony. 
 
 You must not confound the jasper mentioned 
 in Scripture with this variety of opal; for 
 jasper opal is only found in Hungary, and, 
 consequently, was unknown to the Scripture 
 writers. They refer to a sort of quartz, found 
 abundantly in the loose sands of Egypt, and 
 still known as Egyptian jasper, of red and 
 brown colours of various shades, disposed in 
 
272 GEMS. 
 
 ring-shaped marks. There is also striped 
 jasper, with green, gray and yellow stripes, 
 found in Saxony and among the Pentland 
 Hills. Occasionally, on breaking a jasper peb- 
 ble, the colours are so disposed as to afford very 
 tolerable portraits of famous individuals. The 
 poet Chaucer and the Duke of Wellington, 
 and others, have been thus perceived. 
 
 Porcelain jasper is curious, and supposed 
 by some naturalists to be actually clay-slate 
 baked or burned by volcanic heat; and, as it 
 is found where igneous veins have intruded 
 through beds of coal, this supposition seems 
 plausible. Common j asper and agate jasper seem 
 generally to form part of agates. All the jas- 
 pers are hard, capable of bearing a fine polish, 
 and are, therefore, much used for ornament. 
 The Egyptian room at the British Museum 
 shows how much it was used for these pur- 
 poses by the civilized ancient world. 
 
 Alice remarked that they saw some curious 
 stones gray, green, brown and red, called 
 
 cats'-eyes in Mrs. B 's collection, and 
 
 inquired what they were composed of. Mr. 
 Goodman told them that cats'-eye stones are 
 brought from Ceylon, and are chiefly silica; 
 but alumina and lime in very small quantities 
 
TOURMALINE. 273 
 
 are disposed in the fibrous manner that sug- 
 gests their name. They are used by jewellers, 
 and highly prized by gem-fanciers. When the 
 late King of Candy's jewels were sold in Lon- 
 don, in the year 1820, a cats'-eye two inches 
 in diameter was sold for two thousand dol- 
 lars, which seems a large sum for such a 
 stone, as it is more curious than beautiful. 
 
 Magnesia combined with silica produces some 
 pretty gems, though not yet commonly used, 
 such as the green ligure of the Apennines ; 
 the yellow chondrodite, or brucite, of America, 
 and the purple, brown, red or green stones 
 called tourmaline by the mdSerns, and lyn- 
 curium by the ancients, who not only used it 
 as a gem, but were aware of its electric pro- 
 perties when rubbed. Tourmaline seems plen- 
 tiful in Ceylon, and is chiefly valued now for 
 its remarkable property of absorbing one of 
 the coloured rays of light and transmitting 
 all the others, so that it is much used for ex- 
 periments in optical science. 
 
 "I suppose," remarked Edward, "that new 
 gems are often discovered, with all the mining 
 that is going on in the present day." 
 
 Surely, answered Mr. Goodman. I have 
 not pretended to describe all. Zircon is one 
 
274 G-EMS. 
 
 of these gems, sometimes called the jargon of 
 diamonds. They are of various colours. Some 
 are named jacinths; and the brightest purple 
 ones have long been known as hyacinths. 
 They are found, in the sand of rivers, or veins 
 of platina, in Ceylon, France and Bohemia, 
 and are composed chiefly of the elementary 
 oxide called zirconia, with about one-fourth 
 of silica. The fluor-spar of Derbyshire, and 
 the green copper-ore called malachite, are 
 much used for ornamental purposes, and are 
 very pretty, though rather too soft to be 
 ranked as gems. Coral and pearls, too, though 
 products of anftnal origin, add much to the 
 beauty and value of a jeweller's stock. 
 
 You may, perhaps, have read in Eastern 
 tales of the bezoar as a valuable stone; but 
 that is merely a concretion found in the bodies 
 of many animals, consisting, like coral, entirely 
 of phosphate of lime, or magnesia. Its name 
 is Persian, and signifies an antidote to poison, 
 for which imaginative property it was once 
 highly esteemed. The Oriental bezoars con- 
 sist of concentric layers, smooth, soft and 
 finely polished. They burn and melt by fire. 
 Three were sent by the King of Persia as a 
 present to Napoleon, which seemed to be com- 
 
BEZOABS. 275 
 
 posed mostly of woody fibre agglomerated by 
 the animal process of digestion. 
 
 Referring for a moment to the twelve pre- 
 cious stones in the Jewish high-priest's breast- 
 plate; on which the names of the twelve tribes 
 were engraved, that he might "bear them on 
 his heart" when he went into the holy place 
 to confess their sins and make intercession 
 for their, pardon, it is remarkable that eight 
 out of those stones, the sardius, topaz, diamond, 
 beryl, jasper, sapphire, emerald and carbuncle, 
 are mentioned by Ezekiel (chap, xxviii. 13) 
 as having been in Eden ; as well as the onyx, 
 which is the first precious stone named in the 
 Bible. (Gen. ii. 12.) In addition to these, the 
 chalcedony, chrysoprasus, jacinth and ame- 
 thyst are represented as forming the founda- 
 tions of the holy city in John's Revelation. 
 The mind may thus be carried back to the ear- 
 liest times, as if to assure us that men from 
 all ages-, as well as from all nations, should be 
 remembered by the Saviour, our great High- 
 Priest, and that all who trust in him shall be 
 furnished with a title for the holiness and 
 happiness of eternal life. 
 
276 FOSSILS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 FOSSILS. 
 
 THE soil of the county in which Mr. Good- 
 man's house was situated abounded with 
 fossils; and one of the most popular writers on 
 them was sometimes his guest. The attention 
 of his family was, therefore, early turned to 
 their consideration, and curiosity was excited 
 long before the children were old enough to 
 take any intelligent interest in their construc- 
 tion or their origin. As they grew up and 
 travelled through their own and into other 
 countries, similar remains attracted their at- 
 tention, particularly in visiting Trenton Falls 
 and Sharon Springs, in New York, the Bed- 
 ford and Sulphur Springs of Pennsylvania and 
 Virginia, and the falls of the Ohio, at Louis- 
 ville, all famous localities for the collection of 
 these remains, as well as places of resort for 
 health and recreation in the summer season. 
 When, some years after the date when our 
 
FOSSILS. 277 
 
 story begins, Edward made a short voyage to 
 England with his uncle, during one of his 
 college vacations, he had occasion to compare 
 these with an equally celebrated locality for 
 fossils, a certain hill near Dudley, in Stafford- 
 shire, called the Wren's Nest. This hill, 
 though nearly in the centre of England, and 
 far distant from the sea, is almost entirely 
 composed of small marine corals and zoophytes, 
 grouped together in the utmost confusion, 
 many of them exhibiting remarkable elegance 
 of form when a little cleared by dissolving 
 some of the lime-surface with acid. 
 
 In completing the " friendship-grotto," some 
 beautiful specimens from this Wren's Nest, as 
 well as from the coral crags of Suffolk, the 
 encrinites of Llangollen, and fossils from 
 places much nearer home, which had been 
 forwarded by different friends, were so used 
 that a corner of the grotto was entirely filled 
 with the ancient memorials of by-gone times. 
 One day, when Edward was watching a marble- 
 cutter at work, a very large oyster, with both 
 shells complete, had been disclosed in the very 
 middle of a block of compact white marble. 
 The owner presented it to him; and this oc- 
 cupied a conspicuous place in the collection, 
 
 24 
 
278 FOSSILS. 
 
 together with an assortment of fossil woods 
 Mr. Goodman had from Antigua, in the West 
 Indies. 
 
 Having gone over the other parts of the 
 grotto in their mineralogical inquiries, the 
 fossil-corner now came under review, and the 
 young people gladly hailed a leisure hour, 
 when their father offered to tell them what 
 he knew upon the subject. They were look- 
 ing attentively at the specimens from the 
 Wren's Nest when Mr. Goodman joined them, 
 and were talking eagerly of the marvel that 
 sea-shells should be found firmly imbedded in 
 rocks so far inland. They at once propounded 
 a host of questions to him. 
 
 He told them that our earth had under- 
 gone so many revolutions, even since man has 
 inhabited it and recorded its changes, that 
 we need not be surprised to find the remains 
 of sea-shells in places now far inland. In- 
 deed, it is believed that scarcely any part of 
 the known world is entirely destitute of fossit 
 remains. 
 
 Edward here remarked that he supposed 
 the word "fossil" was derived from the word 
 fossus, dug out, and that, therefore, every 
 stone in the ground was really a fossil. 
 
FOSSILS. 279 
 
 Mr. Goodman replied that it might be 
 called so; but the term fossil is, for con- 
 venience, now limited to those organic remains 
 which, plentifully distributed through the sub- 
 stance of the earth's crust, show how plants 
 and animals abounded in former times, from 
 the reptile, which wallowed in mud and slime, 
 to the delicate dragon-fly which sported over 
 the brook. 
 
 Geologists have been for a long time occupying 
 themselves with making out the order of crea- 
 tion from these remains, which are of a low 
 order in the earliest or lowest rocks, and rise 
 in rank- as they occupy later or higher strata : 
 the first creatures, inhabiting the lowest and 
 oldest rocks, being worms and trilobites and 
 sea-weeds; then shellfish, of various kinds; 
 then fish and land-plants ; afterwards lizards 
 and other reptiles; then birds; and, finally, 
 great beasts, ending with their lord and mas- 
 ter, man. But with the details of this fine 
 order of the fossil world, which, in fact, have 
 not even yet been all made out so as to settle 
 disputed points, I will not perplex you, but 
 will simply describe some of the more re- 
 markable fossils of plants, shells and ani- 
 mals. 
 
280 FOSSILS. 
 
 These remains, however, are not found in 
 all rocks; for hitherto granite, trap, and 
 other so-called igneous rocks, whether lying 
 deep under ground or elevated to the tops 
 of high mountains, have yielded no fossils. 
 Limestone, slate and conglomerate contain 
 many fossils ; sandstone and clay abound with 
 all sorts ; coal-beds consist almost entirely of 
 fossil vegetation ; while chalk seems to be com- 
 posed wholly of animal remains. 
 
 The study of these remains gives us the 
 science of palaeontology, so called from three 
 Greek words, palaia, onta, logos, meaning 
 ancient, things, talk. Although the ancients 
 noticed fossils, and the science has such an 
 ancient name, it is a very modern part of 
 human knowledge, having almost been begun 
 by the great French savant, Baron Cuvier. 
 
 Alexander the Great sent the horns of a 
 Scythian animal to Delphi, as a great curiosity; 
 and tusks and bones of remarkable monsters 
 were often hung in the temples of Rome ; while 
 Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, collected 
 petrifactions on the Getulian Mountains of 
 Africa, which he considered the relics of 
 Deucalion's Flood. Strabo, the ancient geo- 
 grapher, accounts for fossil sea-shells being 
 
FOSSILS. 281 
 
 found inland by supposing that the original 
 ocean-bed had been elevated by earthquakes or 
 volcanoes. Learned Arabs discussed the origin 
 of fossils in the tenth century; but it excited 
 no European interest till the Italians, in the 
 sixteenth century, began to investigate the 
 subject; and for three hundred years various 
 theories were started. Some maintained 
 that these remains were mere " sports of 
 nature;"* others, that they were the " pro- 
 duct of fatty matter fermented by heat," 
 " earthy concretions/' the " results of tumult- 
 uous movements of terrestrial exhalations;" 
 or " products of the heavenly bodies." A few 
 maintained, from the beginning of the in- 
 quiry, that they had all once belonged to 
 living beings; but the kind of living beings 
 was quite mistaken. A Swiss professor of 
 anatomy pronounced the bones of an elephant 
 to be those of a giant nineteen feet high; 
 w r hile in England similar fossils were actu- 
 ally once regarded as " the bones of the fallen 
 angels." In Warwick Castle, a bone of a 
 
 * A book has even been lately published in New York, 
 in which the author strange to say, an educated man 
 maintains this absurd old notion. 
 24* 
 
282 FOSSILS. 
 
 fossil mammoth is shown as one of the ribs 
 of the Dun Cow of Guy, Earl of Warwick ! 
 
 Many fossils are very different from any 
 species now existing, and very strange names 
 and descriptions were applied to them. Some 
 agates, mica-slate, and fibrous tremolite, were 
 mistaken for petrified oak, maple, or hem- 
 lock ; fossil stems and trunks of plants among 
 coal were called rattlesnakes; certain shells 
 were termed butternuts and walnuts. The 
 people of Middle Pennsylvania call the spirifers 
 and encrinites of the Devonian rocks of their 
 neighbourhood beeves' hearts, butterflies, and 
 Indian screws. Some varieties of polyparia 
 are regarded as the horns of deer or petri- 
 fied pork. Even petrified squaws, pappooses, 
 and buffaloes were announced as existing in 
 the Far West of America. The existence, 
 however, on the earth's surface of remains of 
 extinct animals in their natural state, is not a 
 fiction. In the year 1801, the entire carcass 
 of an enormous animal was discovered pro- 
 jecting from an ice-bank near the mouth of 
 the river Lena, in Siberia. Two years after- 
 wards the ice melted, so that the whole fell 
 on to a sand-bank, where a drawing was made 
 of it. The flesh was so firm and fresh that 
 
FOSSILS. 283 
 
 s feasted on it for two or three years ; the 
 skin was so thick and heavy as to require the 
 united strength of ten men to remove it, and 
 more than thirty pounds' weight of its hair and 
 bristles were gathered up, of so thick and 
 warm a nature as indicated its preparation 
 for a cold climate. The tusks yielded good 
 ivory. Indeed, notwithstanding this northern 
 race of elephants has long been extinct, there 
 is such an abundant supply of fossil elephants' 
 tusks in Siberia, that though these " ivory 
 quarries," as they have been appropriately 
 termed, have been worked for more than a 
 hundred years, great quantities are still an- 
 nually imported into Liverpool, where they 
 find a ready sale to comb-makers and other 
 ivory-workers. 
 
 Alice asked if this could be accounted for, 
 since the ivory Mr. Layard found at Nineveh 
 seemed almost destroyed by time. 
 
 Mr. Goodman said, perhaps the heat of the 
 climate of Nineveh promoted its decay. This 
 Siberian fossil ivory comes from a region 
 where cold arrests the decay of animal sub- 
 stances. But there may have been also a 
 great difference in the length of time during 
 
284 FOSSILS. 
 
 which these several quantities of ivory have 
 been where they are found. 
 
 Fossils are so plentiful everywhere that it 
 is stated that two-thirds of the present dry 
 land are composed of fossiliferous rocks, often 
 several thousand feet thick. The number of 
 their various contents is continually augment- 
 ing as further investigation takes place. 
 
 Six hundred fossil plants have already been 
 described, and the animal and zoophyte re- 
 mains are still more numerous, nearly ten 
 thousand; so that "the testimony of the 
 rocks" not only reveals chemical mixtures, 
 and the action of fire, water and pressure, 
 as you have heard in former conversations, 
 but actually shows us the forms and con- 
 ditions of extinct vegetable and animal life, 
 and explains how their death and decay are 
 made subservient to the well-being of future 
 generations. Very few of the species found 
 fossil still survive. 
 
 Some of the most perfect fossil-plants, and 
 of the largest size, are chiefly found among 
 the coal-measures ; but the old and new red 
 sandstones, limestone, and clay are not desti- 
 tute of them. The pines, or cone-bearing 
 trees, are found as fossils in the rocks of all 
 
FOSSILS. 
 
 285 
 
 ages, back as far as the coal-era, sometimes, 
 as at Killingworth Colliery, Newcastle, rising 
 through no less than seven different strata. 
 
 Shale (mud or clay). 
 Micaceous sandstone. 
 White sandstone. 
 
 Alternating shells and 
 sandstones. 
 
 Compact sandstone. 
 Blue shale. ' 
 
 Argillo-bituminous shale. 
 
 The high main coal of the 
 district. 
 
 Fossil tree at Killingworth Colliery, Newcastle, England. (See De La 
 Beche, p. 503.) 
 
 In the lowest rocks most of the plants are 
 sea-weeds. It might be thought that sea- 
 weeds would have speedily decayed, most 
 of them being soft and weak. Of course, 
 many of them must have perished without 
 leaving any traces; but the different con- 
 ditions in which fossils are can be accounted 
 for. While the hard bones themselves are 
 sometimes preserved, the more porous sub- 
 
286 FOSSILS. 
 
 stances have become filled with stony matter, 
 or petrified; and sometimes the plant or ani- 
 mal itself gradually decayed, leaving only the 
 impression of its form, or its place was sup- 
 plied by stony particles taking its exact 
 shape. Sea-weeds and mosses, from their 
 delicate nature, seldom leave more than their 
 impress on the rock, so exact, however, as 
 to enable the botanist to detect their species 
 and trace their vessels. Some club-mosses, 
 now utterly extinct, were from twenty to 
 forty-five feet long, rivalling the pines of the 
 present day. Eeeds and rushes were pro- 
 portionately large, while ferns were grown 
 into large trees. Many plants resembling 
 the cactus tribe, with large trunks, curi- 
 ously fluted and scarred, called, from these 
 circumstances, sigillaria and stigmaria, are 
 met with, as well as the whorled leaves of 
 other tribes, to which the name of astero- 
 phyllites is given. 
 
 When coal is laid for a time in acid, 
 until all the soft parts are dissolved, the 
 curious structure of the original plants out 
 of which it was made can be seen in the 
 microscope. 
 
 The actual cones or seeds of these plants 
 
FOSSILS. 287 
 
 are found occasionally in what are called the 
 dirt-beds, or thin layers of vegetable mould, 
 apparently composed of the decayed foliage 
 of the trunks, which occur at intervals even 
 amidst so hard a substance as the Portland 
 stone. In the London blue clay upwards of 
 seven hundred species of seeds and fruits have 
 been detected, most of which belong to a 
 much hotter climate than that of the present 
 age, fruits of the palm, gourd and melon 
 tribes being distinctly visible, while laurels and 
 custard-apple-trees, with others of the plane, 
 buckthorn and hazel families, nearly resem- 
 bling the present forests of the United States, 
 flourished even in the latitude of London, 
 where similar plants are now protected and 
 cherislied in the Crystal Palace as tender 
 exotics. 
 
 The earliest animal fossils comprise many 
 zoophytes and coral-workers. Some of these 
 were small enough to construct those delicate 
 little specimens which need the microscope to 
 reveal their perfections. The encrinites, or 
 stone lilies, when alive, must have waved like 
 tulips, on long stalks of stony rings, some 
 numbering twenty-six thousand rings to a 
 single individual. In their fossil state they 
 
288 FOSSILS. 
 
 compose masses a hundred feet thick, and are 
 clearly visible in many marbles, and in blue 
 limestone rocks. The single wheel-like bones 
 of the stalk abound in the limestones of the 
 coal-measures, especially in the great limestone 
 of the lower coal-measures of Western Penn- 
 sylvania and Eastern Ohio. In the north of 
 England, people call them St. Cuthbert's 
 beads. Shells, both fresh-water and marine, 
 are plentiful in rocks, not only far inland, but 
 on the tops of high mountains. Some of them 
 are so minute that forty-one thousand millions 
 are calculated to 'be contained in a cubic inch ; 
 while others are found whose single diameters 
 measure two or three feet.* The bivalve 
 shells are as accurately fitted together as those 
 of the present day. 
 
 The ammonites so called from their curled- 
 tip appearance, resembling the coiled horn on 
 the ancient statues of Jupiter Ammon are 
 very various in appearance and colour, but 
 all contain a number of separate chambers, 
 through which an air-tube passed to enable 
 
 * Professor Ehrenberg's estimate, from microscopic 
 investigation. From stones in Tuscany, Soldain obtained 
 chambered shells, like that of the nautilus, so small that 
 one thousand of them weighed but a single grain. 
 
FOSSILS. 289 
 
 the creature which lived in the mouth of the 
 shell to rise or sink at pleasure. Mathema- 
 tical architects have pointed out the exquisite 
 contrivance by which the shapes of these 
 divisions have been diversified, so as to pro- 
 duce the great amount of strength requisite to 
 prevent the sides of the shell from being- 
 crushed by the pressure of the water when the 
 animal desired to be below the surface ; and 
 one consequence of this arrangement is to 
 cover the outside of the shell with the most 
 beautiful waved lines. 
 
 The minute nummulite shell of the foramini- 
 fera of which the Pyrenees and some of the 
 rocks in the Crimea and Egypt are composed, 
 are similarly chambered. In the coarse lime- 
 stone near Grignon, in France, no less than 
 four hundred varieties of marine, land and 
 fresh-water shells have been detected, all 
 mingled together ; while the stone called Paris 
 miliolite is entirely composed of millions of tiny 
 shells not larger than grains of fine sand, yet 
 exhibiting various shapes;* while the larger 
 kinds, if differing from our present shells, 
 rival them in beauty, variety and perfection. 
 
 *See Lyell's Manual, p. 194. 
 T 25 
 
290 FOSSILS. 
 
 You may see that the shells in this group of 
 fossils from Dudley are innumerable; and 
 in this large slab of limestone from Nip- 
 penose Valley, near the Susquehanna River, 
 the whole surface is covered with a colony of 
 these nut-shaped shells, all lying as close as 
 possible together, just as they lived and died 
 in their native bed! 
 
 There are also many fossil crustaceous ani- 
 mals, such as the sepia, the remains of whose 
 ink-bag have been found perfect enough to 
 supply material with which to draw his own 
 portrait ; the trilobite, likewise, whose beautiful 
 and complicated projecting eyes contained four 
 hundred spherical lenses, placed on one side 
 only. 
 
 The icthyosaurus, megalosaurus and plesio- 
 saurus, remains of which are preserved in some 
 museums, were enormous reptiles of the lizard 
 tribe, the former thirty feet long, the latter 
 twelve or fourteen feet; while the megalo- 
 saurus, or great lizard, sometimes measured 
 forty or fifty feet. The pterodactyle, a lizard 
 with bat-like wings, was also gigantic. 
 Their teeth have been plentifully preserved, 
 and indicate a capacity for tearing their prey : 
 indeed, half-digested bones of small animals 
 
FOSSILS. 291 
 
 are often . perceived within the cavity of the 
 skeleton. The plesiosaurus himself seems, 
 from these remains, to have been often the 
 victim of his larger relatives. 
 
 These are from sandstone. Remains of im- 
 mense animals of the frog kind occur also in 
 these rocks. In the grounds of the Crystal 
 Palace at London, Professor Owen has en- 
 deavoured to clothe all these ancient crea- 
 tures in the forms it is supposed they wore 
 during life. The form of an animal can be 
 surmised with some accuracy from a part of 
 its bony structure. Thus, it is found that the 
 teeth are exactly suited for the particular sort 
 of food the animal lived on, and that these 
 teeth also correspond with the form of the 
 creature, as feeding on animal or vegetable 
 diet : so that some general idea may be ob- 
 tained of its appearance. When the whole 
 skeleton is preserved, there will be little 
 difficulty. 
 
 The remains of a few fossil snakes have 
 been discovered in some quite modern rocks, 
 such as the London blue clay; and these are 
 chiefly of the python and boa kind. They 
 must have been about twelve or fifteen feet 
 long. In the limestone rocks of Tonna, near 
 
292 FOSSILS. 
 
 Gotta, in Saxony, fifteen feet deep, four 
 snakes' eggs were found in 1850, surrounded 
 with petrified leaves and quite enclosed in 
 the stone. Many recent shells were there 
 also; and the whole mass is comparatively 
 modern. 
 
 In the celebrated lithographic stone of 
 Solenhofen, in Bavaria, no less than two hun- 
 dred and thirty-seven species of fossil animals 
 occur, comprising pterodactyles, saurians, tor- 
 toises, fish, Crustacea, and twenty-six insects. 
 Footprints of wading-birds are also seen in 
 sandstone ; and lately the fossil bones and eggs 
 of a gigantic bird the dinornis have been 
 found in New Zealand, the skeletons of which 
 stand nine feet high. 
 
 Fossil quadrupeds, or rather mammal ani- 
 mals, are seldom found with the reptiles, but 
 become abundant in the formations near the 
 surface of the ground; and, while they occur 
 in all sorts and sizes, several are gigantic 
 enough to rival the huge reptiles just de- 
 scribed. The great mastodon of America is 
 the largest whose fossil skeleton has yet been 
 found complete: the lower jaw alone of one 
 specimen weighed sixty-three pounds, and 
 was two feet ten inches long. The mastodon 
 
FOSSILS. 293 
 
 had two ivory tusks, and seems to have been 
 of the elephant tribe. The dinotherium 
 was an amphibious monster, something be- 
 tween a whale and an elephant, standing on 
 great columnar legs, with a body supposed 
 to have been even forty-five feet long, and 
 two tusks curved downward from the lower 
 jaw, by which perhaps he anchored himself to 
 the banks of the rivers or marshes in which 
 he lived, while he munched the roots of the 
 trees and the coarse reeds which grew upon 
 the shore. The megatherium and mega- 
 lonyx were animals of the sloth kind, with 
 broad, flat, five-toed feet, and huge claws 
 fitted for digging the roots for which their 
 teeth seem best fitted. Mammoth bones 
 abound all around the globe, in a broad belt 
 extending from the fortieth to the seventeenth 
 degree of north latitude. 
 
 In India huge fossil animals are found, of 
 shapes so strange that there seems some ex- 
 cuse for the fables of animal feats in the 
 Hindoo mythology. Many remains of tor- 
 toises especially have been discovered, whose 
 shells are similar to those of the present day, 
 except in size, the carapace, or back-plate, 
 alone measuring twenty feet. 
 
 25* 
 
294 FOSSILS. 
 
 Many other fossil mammals have been 
 found, of the pig, camel, giraffe, horse, dog 
 and opossum kind. In the Paris chalk-basin 
 alone, twenty different kinds have been de- 
 tected, many of which exactly correspond 
 with fossils in the Himalaya Mountains of 
 India. Judging from fossil remains, it might 
 be difficult to find an age when creatures did 
 not prey on each other. 
 
 Alice interrupted Mr. Goodman, and in- 
 quired if there are any fossil fishes. 
 
 Nearly nine hundred varieties, said Mr. 
 Goodman, have already been described. Some 
 are like those we know in the present day; 
 others, differing in size and shape, occur in 
 chalk, limestone, clay and coal. They are 
 distinguished from each other by palaeontolo- 
 gists chiefly by the kind of scales or skin they 
 wore. Some called placoidians, from the 
 Greek word plax, a shield are covered with 
 bony plates, like the sharks and rays of the 
 present time. The ganoidians so named 
 from the Greek word ganos, splendour are 
 clothed with brilliant scales, composed of 
 bone without and enamel within, of various 
 elegant shapes, arranged with perfect regu- 
 larity, and are much more numerous as fos- 
 
FOSSILS. 295 
 
 sils .than the living species, there being now, 
 so far as we know, no other existing repre- 
 sentative of them than the sturgeon ; and the 
 bony pike of North America. 
 
 Some of these fossil fish had strange- 
 shaped heads: one, the cephalaspis, 
 was finished off in sharp edges, like 
 the horns of a crescent, probably de- 
 signed as weapons. The coccosteus 
 had berry-like tubercles all over its 
 plates; and seven species of pter- 
 ichthys had wing-like appendages B 
 which might have served either for \ 
 paddles or for defence. Some of these * 
 ganoids were so nearly allied to rep- \ 
 tiles that they are termed sauroids, \ 
 or lizard fish. The most remarkable \ 
 is the megalichthys, or great fish, \ 
 whose remains were first found near ' 
 Edinburgh : it must have been a huge 
 creature, for some of its scales are 
 live inches in diameter, and one tooth 
 alone measures five inches. 
 
 The largest fossil fishes occur in 
 the coal-measures, where the teeth 
 of the rhizodus are four times the 
 size of those of the largest living crocodile; 
 
296 FOSSILS. 
 
 but the sting of the pleuracanthus, a placoid 
 fish, is one of the most singular weapons of 
 the tribe. It is about fourteen inches long, 
 sharp and polished as a stiletto, round and 
 dense, so as to be of great strength. On two 
 sides there were a thickly-set row of barbs, 
 hooked downwards : so that it must have been 
 an instrument not only of destruction, but of 
 torture. Some of these fossil fishes, there- 
 fore, and reptiles, must have been formidable 
 enemies to one another. 
 
 At Aix the chalk abounds with fishes 
 thickly clustered together. It is estimated 
 that the fossil-beds in Great Britain must 
 be some miles thick. In Pennsylvania and 
 Virginia the fossil rocks of the oldest date 
 alone, the palceozoic, measure seven miles 
 through. The rest may measure three miles 
 more. In the Hastings sand, and Purbeck 
 limestone, in Europe, there are strata one thou- 
 sand feet thick, filled with the minute cases 
 of the cypris. The coral crag of Berkshire 
 consists of petrified coral, generally retaining 
 the position in which they grew at the bottom 
 of the ocean. In this a great variety of beau- 
 tiful corals can be seen by the microscope.* 
 
 * See Lyell's Manual, p. 262. 
 
FOSSILS. 297 
 
 The coal-beds show how vast has been the 
 accumulation of vegetable remains. 
 
 Alice asked how petrifaction is produced, 
 and whether it takes a long time. 
 
 Mr. Goodman said, It goes on to some extent 
 in the present day, as may be seen in Matlock, 
 or Knaresborough, or Clermont, as I before 
 described, or at Sharon Springs, or any other 
 place where objects are continually exposed 
 to streams of water containing a solution of 
 stony or metallic matter, which gradually 
 encrusts them. Clay containing sulphate of 
 iron will in a few years, or even in a few 
 months, produce a very perceptible change in 
 a bone buried in it. Some springs hold iron 
 in solution; and vegetable matter is in time 
 changed into oxide of iron, as is often seen 
 where bog-iron-ore is yearly deposited. Heat 
 may promote a more rapid petrifaction; as 
 Mr. Goppert placed fern-leaves carefully in 
 clay, and then exposed for some time to a 
 red heat, when the leaves were made to re- 
 semble the petrified plants occuring in rocks. 
 
 Many bones and shells, however, remain un- 
 changed in limestone, chalk, clay and sand, 
 and may owe their petrifaction to seclusion 
 from the action of the atmosphere, as is the 
 
 Bancroft Library 
 
298 FOSSILS. 
 
 case with those skeletons carefully enclosed in 
 stone coffins found entire beneath the ruins of 
 ancient abbeys and priories: they, however, 
 speedily crumble into dust when once exposed 
 to the air. Remains once covered by the 
 eruption of volcanoes are, in- like manner, 
 preserved, as was evident in the cities of 
 Pompeii and Herculaneum, disentombed, in 
 our own time, after eighteen centuries of 
 burial. The bones found there were not 
 petrified, I believe. Indeed, the cause of 
 death must in many cases have been suffo- 
 cation only, as the remains were found in 
 cellars or dungeons quite free from the 
 volcanic ashes which overwhelmed the city, 
 but had not penetrated these apartments, 
 though completely blocking them up. 
 
 In the fossil remains of rocks there is great 
 variety in the aspect and position of the 
 bones. Sometimes only a solitary skeleton is 
 discovered, crushed and broken, as if it had 
 died quietly and been disturbed by the weight 
 of accumulated matter gradually pressing 
 down upon it from above. In other cases 
 there are whole beds of fossil fishes, or quad- 
 rupeds, in every variety of attitude and stage 
 of petrifaction, as if they had been suddenly 
 
FOSSILS. 299 
 
 overwhelmed by some convulsion of nature. 
 Caves forming the dens of wild beasts appear 
 to have had their openings closed by the fall 
 of adjacent rocks; and in them are found the 
 bones not only of their owners, but the 
 gnawed remains of their prey. At Kirkdale, 
 twenty-five miles from York, there is a cave 
 where the remains of three hundred hyenas 
 were found, besides many others of the ox, 
 rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, bear, wolf, 
 hare, water-rat and several birds. Many of 
 these latter bones appear to have been broken 
 by the teeth of the hyenas: they are con- 
 fusedly mixed in loam, or mud, and dispersed 
 through a crust of stalagmite which now 
 forms the floor of the cave. 
 
 The hippopotamus, rhinoceros and elephant 
 are not English animals; nor are hyenas. The 
 presence of these three hundred hyenas and their 
 prey is, therefore, a curious and suggestive fact 
 revealed by geological research. It can only 
 be explained by supposing that the climates of 
 the earth must have undergone great changes, 
 and that the temperature of England must 
 have been formerly much hotter than it is 
 now. 
 
 Ofisiferous breccias, or rocks composed of 
 
300 FOSSILS. 
 
 fragments of bone, cemented by some stony 
 matter, occur in all parts of the globe. Those 
 lately discovered in Australia closely resemble 
 the bony breccia of the Mediterranean, in 
 which the fragments are firmly bound to- 
 gether by a red ochrous cement. There are 
 likewise, in various places, beds of fossil shells 
 and corals, which seem to have been left by the 
 receding sea or river floods. In Suffolk there 
 are two distinct narrow beds of fossil shells 
 and corals, extending for many miles, one 
 of which (called the coralline) is white, and 
 the other red crag, but containing not less 
 than five hundred and seventy-five varieties 
 of testacea alone; about one hundred and 
 fifty of these being equally common in both 
 crags. 
 
 In the red crag, the whole mass, both of 
 shells, sand and corals, is of a deep yellow- 
 ish-red colour, from iron, or ochre, making 
 part of its composition. The greater number 
 of these fossils differ from any known species 
 now existing. Similar fossils are found near 
 Antwerp, and in Normandy. 
 
 Near the submerged forest on the coast of 
 Norfolk, in England, elephants' grinders are 
 found in such numbers that two thousand 
 
FOSSILS. 301 
 
 were dredged up by oyster-fishers in thirteen 
 years. They call it the elephant-bed. 
 
 The blue marl at the foot of the Apennines 
 is very aluminous and contains many fossils. 
 Near the city of Parma, for the thickness of 
 two thousand feet, it is full of small sea- 
 shells, which are soft when first removed, but 
 become hard when dry. The enamel is often 
 well preserved, and even their external colour 
 and pearly lustre, as well as the ligament 
 uniting the valves, which is sometimes per- 
 fect. Occasionally, however, the shells are 
 entirely silicified, or turned to flint. 
 
 The seven hills on which Eome stands are 
 composed partly of marine shells, with cover- 
 ings of volcanic tufa, and usually capped by 
 deposits from rivers or lakes. But it is im- 
 possible to describe all the interesting pheno- 
 mena which are continually being discovered 
 as the surface of our earth is turned up for the 
 railroads, canals and mines of its restless inha- 
 bitants. In passing through cuttings by rail 
 or road, it is very interesting to observe the 
 rocks on each side as they actually stand. 
 
 In sandstone there is often the ripple-mark 
 existing,- which we perceive on the shore of 
 every calm sea or lake ; and in the green slate 
 
 26 
 
302 FOSSILS. 
 
 of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, rain-drops and 
 worm-tracks are observed on successive layers, 
 the upper one showing exact casts of the 
 drops below. The sides of these are raised so 
 as to indicate from which point of the com- 
 pass the wind blew, making the rain to 
 slant. Professor Hitchcock made clay into 
 paste, and sprinkled water upon it, which 
 produced exactly similar marks. Footmarks 
 of the chirotherium have been observed among 
 these ripple-marks. 
 
 Mr. Goodman observed the great interest 
 of his young auditors in the objects and 
 facts disclosed by the discoveries of geology 
 in modern times. Thus he had been led to 
 extend his remarks in this direction, and 
 had turned their attention, without much of 
 scientific order, to familiar and accessible sub- 
 jects, his view being rather to stimulate than 
 to satisfy curiosity, and so to lead to future 
 inquiry and study. 
 
 Having gone over most of the specimens 
 collected in the " Friendship-Grotto," and 
 various engagements being about to disperse 
 several of the party usually gathered there, 
 he congratulated them on the pleasant hours 
 they had passed together, adding a hope 
 
CONCLUSION. 303 
 
 that, if it were God's will, there might be 
 more of such happy meetings in the same 
 place. 
 
 As regarded the subjects latterly referred 
 to, Mr. Goodman said that the discoveries 
 made in the structure and arrangement of 
 the earth's crust all tended to establish the 
 great truth that every thing had been cre- 
 ated, designed and arranged by the omni- 
 potent and omniscient God for purposes of 
 love and kindness to his creatures, and espe- 
 cially to man. All that is opened to our 
 view delightfully confirms to our senses how 
 great, how perfect and how good our God is. 
 In the words of the prophet, we may say, 
 " Hast thou not known ? Hast thou not 
 heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, 
 the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth 
 not, neither is weary? There is no searching 
 of his understanding." Isa. xl. 28. 
 
 But it is not in the earth's crust only that 
 we are to note the wisdom and power of God. 
 In that stone book we read of mighty revolu- 
 tions in matter, and in the book of history the 
 revolutions of mankind are related; but in 
 the book of God we read of the revolutions of 
 the human soul, that it was created upright, 
 
304 CONCLUSION. 
 
 to enjoy sacred and holy communion with its 
 Creator; how, by disobedience to God's just 
 commands, man lost his privileges, and be- 
 came not only depraved himself, but spread 
 depravity around : yet " God so loved the 
 world" that he gave his Son to be a sacri- 
 fice, that men might be redeemed, and, by 
 believing in Christ, might be pardoned and 
 sanctified, to live forever; and when, at the 
 last great day, these heavens shall pass away 
 and this changing earth be burned up, those, 
 his faithful servants and children, whose 
 names are written in the Lamb's book of life, 
 shall be raised from their long sleep of death 
 and be presented faultless before the throne 
 of God. 
 
 " Oh that, with yonder sacred throng, 
 
 We at his feet may fall, 
 Join in the everlasting song, 
 And crown him Lord of all!" 
 
 THE END. 
 
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