Our author is in a mistake in supposing that Dr Black had written any thing upon the subject; he had only suggested the argument of this example of mineral alkali to me, as I have mentioned; and, the use I made of that argument was to corroborate the example I had given of sal gem. If, therefore, our author does not deny the inference from the state of that mineral alkali, his observation upon it must refer to something which this other example of his is to prove on the opposite side, or to support the aqueous instead of the igneous theory; and, this is a subject which I am always willing to examine in the most impartial manner, having a desire to know the true effect of aqueous solution in the consolidation of mineral bodies, and having no objection to allow it any thing which it can possibly produce, although denying that it can do every thing, as many mineralists seem to think. The question, with regard to this example of our author's of a mineral alkali with its water of crystallization, must be this, Whether those saline bodies had been concreted by the evaporation of the aqueous solvent with which they had been introduced, or by the congelation of that saline substance from a fluid state of fusion; for, surely, we are not to suppose those bodies to have been created in the place and state in which we find them. With regard to the evaporation or separation of the aqueous solvent, this may be easily conceived according to the igneous theory; but, the aqueous theory has not any means for the producing of that effect in the mineral regions, which is the only place we are here concerned with. Therefore, this example of a concreted body of salt, whatever it may prove in other respects, can neither diminish the evidence of my Theory with regard to the igneous origin of stony substances, nor can it contribute to support the opposite supposition of an aqueous origin to them.