of human skill and industry, and at the same
time secure from wanton destruction, and from
natural decay ; in the more general dispersion of
those metals which are most important, and the
comparatively rare occurrence of others which
are less so ; and still further in affording the
means whereby their compound ores may be reduced
to a state of purity
The argument, however, which arises from
the utility of these dispositions, does not depend
on the establishment of any one or more of
the explanations proposed to account for them.
Whatever may have been the means whereby
* I owe to my friend Mr. John Taylor the suggestion of another
argument, arising from the phenomena of mines, which derives
much value from being a result of the long experience of a
practical man of science.
“ There is one argument,” says Mr. Taylor, “ which has always
struck me with considerable force, as proving wise and beneficent
design, to be drawn from the position of the metals. I should
say that they are so placed as to be out of the reach of immediate
and improvident exhaustion, exercising the utmost ingenuity of
man, first to discover them, then to devise means of conquering
the difficulties by which the pursuit of them is surrounded.
“ Hence a continued supply through successive ages, and hence
motives to industry and to the exercise of mental faculties, from
which our greatest happiness is derived. The metals might have
been so placed as to have been all easily taken away, causing a
glut in some periods and a dearth in others, and they might have
been accessible without thought, or ingenuity.
“ As they are, there appears to me to be that accordance with
the perfect arrangements of an allwise Creator, which it is so
beautiful to ohserve and to contemplate.”
mineral veins were charged with their precious
contents ; whether Segregation, or Sublimation,
were the exclusive method by which the metals
were accumulated ; or, whether each of the supposed
causes may have operated simultaneously
or consecutively in their production ; the existence
of these veins remains a fact of the highest
importance to the human race : and although the
Disturbances, and other processes in which they
originated, may have taken place at periods long
antecedent to the creation of our species, we may
reasonably infer, that a provision for the comfort
and convenience of the last, and most perfect
creatures He was about to place upon its surface,
was in the providential contemplation of the
Creator, in his primary disposal of the physical
forces, which have caused some of the earliest,
and most violent Perturbations of the globe.*
* That part of the History of Metals which relates to their
various Properties and Uses, and their especial Adaptation to the
Physical condition of Man, has been so ably and amply illustrated
by two of my Associates in this Series of Treatises, that I
have more satisfaction in referring my readers to the Chapters of
Dr. Kidd and Dr. Prout upon these subjects than in attempting
myself to follow the history of the productions of metallic veins,
beyond the sources from which they are derived within the body
of the Earth.
A summary of the all-important Uses o f Metals to Mankind
is thus briefly given, by one of our earliest and most original writers
on Physico-theology.
“ As for Metals, they are so many ways useful to mankind,
and those Uses so well known to all, that it would be lost labour