Crystal, precious stones, and all those which have a regular figure, even small flints formed by concentrical beds, whether found in perpendicular cavities of rocks, or elsewhere, are only exudations of large flints, or concrete juices of the like matters, and are therefore spurious stones, and real stalactites of flint or rock.
Shells are never found either in rock, granate, or free-stone, although they are often met with in vitrifiable sand, from which these matters derive their origin; this seems to prove that sand cannot unite to form free-stone or rock but when it is pure, and that if it is mixed with shells or substances of other kinds, which are heterogeneous to it, its union is prevented. I have observed the little pebbles which are often found in beds of sand mixed with shells, but never found any shell therein: these pebbles are real concretions of free-stone formed in the sand in the places where it is not mixed with heterogeneous matters which oppose the formation of larger masses.
We have before observed, that at Amsterdam, which is a very low country, sea shells were found at 100 feet below the earth, and at Marly-la-Ville, six miles from Paris, at 75 feet; we likewise meet with the same at the bottom of mines, and in banks of rocks, beneath a height of stone 50, 100, 200, and 1000 feet thick, as is apparent in the Alps and Pyrennees, where, in the lower beds, shells and other marine productions are constantly found. But to proceed in order, we find shells on the mountains of Spain, France, and England; in all the marble quarries of Flanders, in the mountains of Gueldres, in all hills around Paris, Burgundy, and Champagne; in one word, in every place where the basis of the soil is not free-stone or tuffa; and in most of these places there are more shells than other matters in the substance of the stones. By _shells_, I mean not only the wrecks of shell-fish, but those of crustaceous animals, the bristles of sea hedge-hogs, and all productions of the sea insects, as coral, madrepores, astroites, &c. We may easily be convinced by inspection, that in most calculable stones and marble, there is so great a quantity of these marine productions that they appear to surpass the matter which unites them.