356 Huttonian Theory . 1. Veins do not prefent horizontal dep>ofitions *, V • but f mulcted at the bottom of the fea, we perceive the fame materials of which thefe flrata are compofed. The 'fame does not equally hold of veins. “ Look, fays Dr Hut ton, into the lources of our mineral treafures ! Aik the miner, from whence has come the metal in his veins ? Not from the earth, or air above, nor from the flrata which the vein traverfes : thefe do not contain an atom of the minerals now confidered. There is but one place from whence thefe materials may have come this is the bowels of the earth ; the place of power and expatfion ; the place from whence has proceeded that intenfe heat, by which loofe materials have been confolidated into rocks, as well as that enormous force, by which the regular flrata have been broken and difplaced !” The above is a very jnfl and natural reflection ; but if, inflead of interrogating the miner, we confult the Neptunill, we will receive a very different reply. As this philofopher never embar- raffes himfelf about preferving uniformity in the courfe of nature, he will tell us, that though it may be true, that neither the air, the upper part of the- earth’s fur- face, nor even the fea, contain at prefent any thing like the materials of the ( veins ; yet the time was, when thefe materials were all mingled together in the chaotic mafs, and conflituted one vaft fluid, encompafliug the earth ; from which fluid it was, that the minerals were precipi tated and depofited in the clefts and fiffures of the flrata.’’ Playfair's llluftrations of the Huttonian ‘Theory, p. 247, 248. * “ If veins were filled by depofition from above, we ought to difcover in them fuch horizontal flratification, as