Rocks of all ages, including those in which organic remains have never been found, yielded the molecules in abundance. Their existence was ascertained in each of the constituent minerals of granite, a fragment of the Sphinx being one of the specimens examined.
To mention all the mineral substances in which I have found these molecules, would be tedious; and I shall confine myself in this summary to an enumeration of a few of the most remarkable. These were both of aqueous and igneous origin, as travertine, stalactites, lava, obsidian, 10] pumice, volcanic ashes, and meteorites from various localities.[1] Of metals I may mention manganese, nickel, plumbago, bismuth, antimony, and arsenic. In a word, in every mineral which I could reduce to a powder, sufficiently fine to be temporarily suspended in water, I found these molecules more or less copiously; and in some cases, more particularly in siliceous crystals, the whole body submitted to examination appeared to be composed of them.
In many of the substances examined, especially those of a fibrous structure, as asbestus, actinolite, tremolite, zeolite, and even steatite, along with the spherical molecules, other corpuscles were found, like short fibres somewhat moniliorm, whose transverse diameter appeared not to exceed that of the molecule, of which they seemed to be primary combinations. These fibrils, when of such length as to be probably composed of not more than four or five molecules, and still more evidently when formed of two or three only, were generally in motion, as least as vivid as that of the simple molecule itself; and which from the fibril often changing its position in the fluid, and from its occasional bending, might be said to be somewhat vermicular.
In other bodies which did not exhibit these fibrils, oval particles of a size about equal to two molecules, and which were also conjectured to be primary combinations of these, were not unfrequently met with, and in motion generally more vivid than that of the simple molecule; their motion consisting in turning usually on their longer axis, and then
- ↑ I have since found the molecules in the sand-tubes, formed by lightning, from Drig in Cumberland.
