631. While the fundamental earths were precipitated, the calcareous
earth was repelled and retained, on account of its homogeneity, in
water, because the acid half continued longer fluid than the basic.
The water was thus after its separation from these substances a true
limewater.
632. Through this separation, however, the great antagonism in the
water ceased; and subordinate antagonisms now made their appearance,
which were kept united by the former. The calcareous earth is now
occupied no more as one pole, but is the whole water itself, upon
which, as it is less deep, the light acts anew and with greater force.
633. The dispersions of earths began just at this period to
multiply themselves, from the only fettering agent, namely gravity,
having betaken itself to rest; every earthy now emerges from its
connexions, the factors falling wholly asunder into alkalies and acids,
which combine in a multifarious manner.
634. These dispersions associated with the torrents of water that
were now everywhere present prevented crystallization from taking
place upon a large scale; they moreover mingled with the mechanically
water-borne and crumbling débris of the earlier species of rocks; their
laminations therefore resemble rather a mechanical deposit from water.
They are the _Stratified rocks_.
635. As the first period must include the calcareous earth, so also
in the period of strata or in the dualized period this earth is not
without a slight antagonism of the fundamental earths; and this it
is which for the first time becomes distinct, but always with a
preponderance of the calcareous over the fundamental earths, while in
the primary periods this relative proportion of the two was the reverse.
636. The primary period repeats itself again in the second, and thus
strata consisting of the fundamental earths originate, as we have seen
exemplified in the primary and transition formations of limestone. The
precipitation of strata is divided also into four formations, into
silicious, argillaceous, talcose and calcareous strata, close to which
range also the strata of ores, Inflammables and salts.
637. In other respects the chemical deposits of this period are so
blended with the mechanical, that their mode of origin seems for the
most part to have happened in both ways.
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