Gluten, a Latin word adopted by naturalists to refer to the substance that serves to bind the earthen elements that a stone or rock is composed of, or to join together different loose stones to make one sole mass. We know that stones aren’t different from soil except in terms of consistency and density; these qualities are owing to gluten , or a kind of adhesive material. It is very difficult to determine what this material consists of and to what degree it varies; only time and experiments will provide answers to these questions about which we are still in the dark; perhaps one day we will have reason to believe that gluten alone determines the differences that one notes between different kinds of stones, and it could very well be that the material that serves as their base is the same in all cases. One of the best ways to discover the nature of gluten , or of the connection which serves to combine the particles that make up a stone, would be to examine the waters found in the caves and cavities of the Earth; these waters are perpetually filtered as they flow over the rocks within which these cavities are found, and either fill them little by little, or make stalactites, concretions, encrustations, and crystallizations. See Cave. Add to this that all water upon close examination always leaves behind, after evaporation, a more or less considerable sediment of soil, that it swept along after having dissolved it. If these waters are loaded with saline elements, like sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, etc. or with some other mineral essence, we sense that they are capable of forming an infinite number of different combinations, having varying effects on the substances through which they pass; and the combinations which can happen in these waters must themselves necessarily produce different products and make different kinds of glutens . See Crystallization, Crystal, Rocks, Cave, etc. Guhr, etc.