650. As regards the mode of occurrence of the calcareous earth, it also is not of so mechanical a nature as is generally supposed. Its legitimate relation to sandstone and other precipitations, speak against that. But crystallization has for the most part disappeared in it; and it is only in cavities that crystals shoot out, like the ores in metallic veins. In granite the commencement is crystal, but in lime it is the termination; crystallization determines the character in granite, in calx or lime, however, the crystals are only blossoms.
651. The calcareous earth multiplies itself as a reduction of the earth of gravity and that indeed three times. There exists, so to speak, a corrosive silicious as also argillaceous and talcose earth. The three corrosive earths are calcareous earth, strontian and baryta, or it may be said that the first would be salt, the second Inflammable, and the third, metal.
652. Still a polar separation emerges in the stratified calx, while the two earth-principles become more individualized. The carbonate of lime ranks on the lowest stage. In this, however, the differencing process of light had not remained stationary, but elevated the carbon to a higher grade; carburetted hydrogen and sulphur originate in the calcareous earth combined as gypsum, with oxygen.
653. It may be said, that calx were decomposed into alkali and carbon; water into oxygen and acid. Carbon and oxygen become carbonic acid in limestone. Carbons and hydrogen become sulphur, combined with oxygen sulphuric acid in gypsum. Hydrogen and oxygen become hydrochloric acid in common salt.
654. Gypsum is to be regarded as a calcareous earth, which is inflammable in character, as the fundamental earths were metallic. The philosophical essence of gypsum consists not in its oxydation by sulphuric acid, but in the combination of calcareous earth with sulphur, as occurs in that of iron-spar with iron; in this combination, however, the carbonic acid has still remained, whereby the sulphur became acid. The gypsum was therefore a carbonaceo-sulphate of lime, an oxydized metal with a very large proportion of calcareous earth.
655. Gypsum and chalk are related polarwise to each other, separate during the general precipitation, and are deposited opposite to, or alternately upon, each other.
656. In fluor-spar, apatite and boracite the last differentialization of lime and carbonic acid is lost. The principal masses are the carbonate and sulphate of lime.
657. The strata of the Inflammables, such as of pit-coal, and of the ores, as of iron, calamine, appear to have originated in simply a mechanical manner.
REPEATED SEDIMENTARY PRECIPITATIONS.
658. The precipitating process is a process of polarization, which comprises several stages. In it there are moments of time.