NOTE XVI … CALCAREOUS EARTH.
High mountains and deep mines replete with shells; the earth's nucleus covered with limestone; animals convert water into limestone; all the calcareous earth in the world formed in animal and vegetable bodies; solid parts of the earth increase; the water decreases; tops of calcareous mountains dissolved; whence spar, marbles, chalk, stalactites; whence alabaster, fluor, flint, granulated limestone, from solution of their angles, and by attrition; tupha deposited on moss; limestones from shells with animals in them; liver-stone from fresh- water muscles; calcareous earth from land-animals and vegetables, as marl; beds of marble softened by fire; whence Bath-stone contains lime as well as limestone.
NOTE XVII … MORASSES.
The production of morasses from fallen woods; account by the Earl Cromartie of a new morass; morasses lose their salts by solution in water; then their iron; their vegetable acid is converted into marine, nitrous, and vitriolic acids; whence gypsum, alum, sulphur; into fluor- acid, whence fluor; into siliceous acid, whence flint, the sand of the sea, and other strata of siliceous sand and marl; some morasses ferment like new hay, and, subliming their phlogistic part, form coal-beds above and clay below, which are also produced by elutriation; shell-fish in some morasses, hence shells sometimes found on coals and over iron- stone.
NOTE XVIII … IRON
Calciform ores; combustion of iron in vital air; steel from deprivation of vital air; welding; hardness; brittleness like Rupert's drops; specific levity; hardness and brittleness compared; steel tempered by its colours; modern production of iron, manganese, calamy; septaria of iron-stone ejected from volcanos; red-hot cannon balls.
NOTE XIX … FLINT.
1. Siliceous rocks from morasses; their cements. 2. Siliceous trees; coloured by iron or manganese; Peak-diamonds; Bristol-stones; flint in form of calcareous spar; has been fluid without much heat; obtained from powdered quartz and fluor-acid by Bergman and by Achard. 3. Agates and onyxes found in sand-rocks; of vegetable origin; have been in complete fusion; their concentric coloured circles not from superinduction but from congelation; experiment of freezing a solution of blue vitriol; iron and manganese repelled in spheres as the nodule of flint cooled; circular stains of marl in salt-mines; some flint nodules resemble knots of wood or roots. 4. Sand of the sea; its acid from morasses; its base from shells. 5. Chert or petrosilex stratified in cooling; their colour and their acid from sea-animals; labradore-stone from mother- pearl. 6. Flints in chalk-beds; their form, colour, and acid, from the flesh of sea-animals; some are hollow and lined with crystals; contain iron; not produced by injection from without; coralloids converted to flint; French-millstones; flints sometimes found in solid strata. 7. Angles of sand destroyed by attrition and solution in steam; siliceous breccia cemented by solution in red-hot water. 8. Basaltes and granites are antient lavas; basaltes raised by its congelation not by subterraneous fire.
NOTE XX … CLAY.
Fire and water two great agents; stratification from precipitation; many stratified materials not soluble in water. 1. Stratification of lava from successive accumulation. 2. Stratifications of limestone from the different periods of time in which the shells were deposited. 3. Stratifications of coal, and clay, and sandstone, and iron-ores, not from currents of water, but from the production of morass-beds at different periods of time; morass-beds become ignited; their bitumen and sulphur is sublimed; the clay, lime, and iron remain; whence sand, marle, coal, white clay in valleys, and gravel-beds, and some ochres, and some calcareous depositions owing to alluviation; clay from decomposed granite; from the lava of Vesuvius; from vitreous lavas.