OUTLINE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COURSE OF GEOLOGICAL LECTURES, 
 
 GIVEN IN 
 
 YALE COLLEGE. 
 
 w 
 
 
 NEW HAVEN: 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY HEZEKIAH HOWE. 
 1820. 
 
EARTH 
 
 SCIENCES 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT, ss. 
 
 ********* BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the eighth day of January, in the fifty 
 
 * "Lt S * third year of the Independence of the United States of America, HEZE- 
 
 | KIAH HOWE, of the said District, hath deposited in this office, the title 
 
 ********* of a Book, the right whereof he claims as Proprietor, in the words fol- 
 
 lowing, to wit: 
 
 "Outline of the Course of Geological Lectures, given in Yale College." 
 
 In conformity to the Act of Congress of the United States, entitled, "An Act for 
 the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, 
 to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned." 
 And also to the Act, entitled, " An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act 
 for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts, and 
 Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies during the times therein men- 
 tioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and 
 etching historical and other prints." 
 
 CHARLES A. INGERSOLL, 
 
 Clerk of the District of Connecticut. 
 A true copy of Record, examined and sealed by me, 
 
 CHARLES A INGERSOLL, 
 
 Clerk of the District of Connecticut. 
 
<M wt ' ' ?;* * >i )f 
 
 JiV &&& 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS outline of my course of geological lectures, is to be re- 
 garded, as a skeleton, furnished indeed with some of the princi- 
 ple muscles ; but, destitute of the color and finish, of a perfect 
 form. To my pupils, to whom it has particular reference, it may 
 serve both as a guide and a review, and should it prove, in any 
 degree, useful to others, I shall be gratified. It is intended as 
 an outline of the philosophy of geology ; according to the best 
 views, which I have been able to take of the subject. Those who 
 may peruse it, will, however, do me the justice to believe, that 
 in the progress of the lectures, full details are given, and nume- 
 rous specimens of rocks exhibited, both Foreign and American, in 
 the order proposed, with ample descriptions of their mechanical 
 and chemical constitution their organized remains, and the 
 order of their arrangement and connexion, and some subjects are 
 discussed which are not even mentioned in this general sketch. 
 As it is the fashion of the day, to attribute almost every thing in 
 the earth to igneous agency, I shall probably be thought to be 
 behind the present state of opinion, while I maintain, that the 
 chemical affinities, through the medium of aqueous solutions of 
 the great chemical agents as well as of water itself, have also 
 produced important effects in the early arrangements of the 
 planet. 
 
 If Werner attributed too much to these causes, may there not 
 be danger, at this day, of vibrating to the opposite extreme 1 It 
 is indeed already proved, that igneous agency has been vastly 
 more extensive than was formerly believed, and it is probable that 
 evidence of this kind will accumulate, as the researches of well 
 instructed geologists are directed, more and more, to this impor- 
 tant topic. But, why exclude any of the great powers, which we 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 find in actual operation ; or, of whose ancient activity there ap- 
 pears probable evidence ? 
 
 In the absence of positive evidence, it is perfectly justifiable to 
 reason, analogically, upon facts and principles, well ascertained 
 by experiment and observation ; always bearing in mind, howev- 
 er, that there are probably many agents and agencies, of which 
 we are still ignorant, and that the discovery of some new power, 
 or of some new mode of operation in those already known, might, 
 very materially alter, nay, perhaps entirely subvert conclusions, 
 in which we have been accustomed to repose unlimited confi- 
 dence. Such a train of thought is far from being agreeable, for 
 we are always prone to reason, on every subject, as if we under- 
 stood the whole matter ; but, the history of science has abundant- 
 ly proved that philosophy, after building splendid systems, has, 
 in consequence of its own discoveries, been often obliged to re- 
 turn to the humble task of learning its elements anew. 
 
 The arrangement implied in the following sketch is, it will be 
 perceived, founded upon the great outlines of the Wernerian plan. 
 Whatever may be the errors and imperfections of that system, 
 (for it undoubtedly has both,) its great outlines still appear to be 
 founded in truth, and to present the best clew to conduct the 
 young pupil through the labyrinths of geology. It has become 
 fashionable to decry Werner ; but, without being his blind ad- 
 mirer, I may be permitted to ask, who has done more for geol- 
 ogy, and who has done it better ? 
 
 The author of this sketch begs leave to add, that, desirous of 
 following truth only, he has kept himself disentangled from the 
 prevailing geological systems ; and, although trained in geology 
 principally at Edinburgh, in the schools both of fire and water* 
 he is neither Wernerian nor Huttonian, Neptunian nor Plutonist ; 
 but simply a student of facts a learner, from those who cer- 
 tainly know more, and a teacher to those who may possibly 
 
 * Hope, Playfair, Murray, Hall, Jameson, Seymour, &c. were the active men of 
 that place, and period, (1805-6,) and several of them were then, and some are still, 
 public instructors, or distinguished writers in geology. 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 know less. Being habitually occupied, as a part of his public 
 duties, in presenting to his pupils, the great facts of geology, and 
 in reasoning upon them; he accepts, with equal readiness, the 
 agency of fire or water, or other agents, as they may appear best 
 adapted to explain a given effect, and he has no hesitation in call- 
 ing in the aid of all the great natural powers, whether mechanical 
 or chemical, as there may be occasion. 
 
 So far as the following arrangement is founded upon the Wer- 
 nerian plan, it is one of convenience merely, and therefore there 
 is no hesitation in deviating from it, or in substituting other views, 
 when they appear preferable. 
 
 Had Werner lived till this time, he would probably have ad- 
 mitted that the differences between the trap rocks and the lavas 
 have become evanescent, and that it is certainly possible, if not 
 probable, that they may have had a similar origin. 
 
 On the other hand, those authors who banish the transition 
 class of rocks, being still obliged to describe such rocks, (because 
 they exist, and cannot be annihilated by the stroke of the pen, 
 which erases them from an artificial system) are compelled to di- 
 vide them between the primitive and secondary rocks, which pro- 
 duces confusion and inconvenience, and destroys the distinctness, 
 which, to a great degree, marks the three great divisions of prim- 
 itive, transition and secondary. The rocks of North America, as 
 far as they have been examined, correspond, in general, remarka- 
 bly well with the great outlines of Werner ; and who in North 
 America has done so much to develop the grand features of 
 our geology, as the AMERICAN WERNER, WILLIAM MACLURE, 
 whose industry and acumen are equalled only by his candor and 
 freedom from the bias of system. 
 
 The views presented in this sketch have not been adopted, 
 without full consideration of the facts upon which they are 
 founded. 
 
 The study of those facts seems necessarily to conduct us to the 
 conclusion, that the proofs of both succession and revolution, 
 connected with time, and with both order and disorder, which 
 are so abundant and decisive in the crust of our planet, cannot 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 all be referred to the deluge. That great convulsion is indeed 
 recorded on the surface of the earth in indelible characters, and 
 it is impossible to weigh the evidence which geology presents in 
 support of it, without admitting, independently of history or tra- 
 dition, that it has happened. The facts that must be referred 
 to it, are numerous, and highly important and interesting. 
 
 But it is impossible, upon any sound principles of philosophical 
 reasoning, to refer to the same event a still more extensive, va- 
 rious and interesting class of facts, relating chiefly to the rocks 
 composed of ruins and fragments, and to those containing organ- 
 ized remains, in a mineralized and consolidated state, entombed 
 in the solid strata and mountains. This is a vast field of observa- 
 tion and instruction, and it is less known even to the greater 
 number of intelligent and educated persons, than almost any de- 
 partment of knowledge. None but geologists study it with dili- 
 gence, and none who have not made themselves masters of the 
 facts, are qualified to judge of their importance and of their bear- 
 ing. The subject requires, for full illustration, the exhibition of 
 a great many facts, either in the fields, mines and mountains, 
 or, as an imperfect substitute, in the cabinet. Persons who are 
 entirely destitute of this species of information, can never have 
 formed the habit of comparing one fact in geology with anoth- 
 er, and of thus estimating their relation to each other, and to 
 the entire planet. It is very difficult to find access, on this sub- 
 ject, to many minds, otherwise enlightened, and habituated to re- 
 ceive and weigh evidence with candor and intelligence. The 
 reason obviously is, that they are not in possession of the first el- 
 ementary conceptions of the subject ; if the facts are not denied, 
 they are neglected, and fail to make the impression on the mind 
 which they must always produce, when fully understood and 
 realized. No well instructed geologist hesitates to refer them to 
 an earlier period than the deluge, and to a widely different order 
 of things. 
 
 This distinction, it will be seen, pervades the following sketch, 
 and the writer believes that no consistent and rational account of 
 the structure of the earth can be given upon any other plan. 
 
PREFACE. I 
 
 Are the discoveries of geology consistent with the history con- 
 tained in the book of Genesis? 
 
 Respecting the deluge, there can be but one opinion, and that 
 opinion has been already stated ; geology fully confirms the 
 scripture history of that event. 
 
 There is doubtless more difficulty as to the earlier periods ; but 
 the writer, after studying the subject for many years, has formed 
 the opinion, that the geological facts are not only consistent with 
 sacred history, but that their tendency is to illustrate and con- 
 firm it. 
 
 It is true, that the Bible is not a book of physical science, and 
 that its allusions to physical subjects are, in the main, adapted to 
 common apprehensions. Still, there are two great events re- 
 corded in it, which, although they have a momentous moral bear- 
 ing, are, in their nature, entirely physical ; we allude to the crea- 
 tion and arrangement of the planet, and to the deluge which was 
 made to sweep over its surface. Why should any one refuse to 
 attend to a history of these two stupendous events, merely be- 
 cause that history professes to have proceeded from the same au- 
 thor as the work itself; and why should we suppose that the 
 brief notices of the great physical facts, connected with a phys- 
 ical creation and a physical destruction, are not correctly stated, 
 in this earliest and most venerable of histories? 
 
 If all our discoveries regarding the surface and the interior of 
 the planet tend, when properly understood, to confirm the credibil- 
 ity of both these events, and to enable us to discriminate between 
 the circumstances and evidence which belong to them respective- 
 ly what moral consideration can, in this case, forbid a happy 
 application of the discoveries of science, and why should science 
 refuse to lend its aid to the support of moral truth ! 
 
 YALE COLLEGE, January 12, 1829. 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 The succeeding sketch is not intended to contain minute de- 
 scriptions of rocks, but is occupied, principally, with their general 
 characters their probable origin as regards the immediate phys- 
 ical agents, and the order of time in which they were deposited. 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 GENERAL OBJECT OF GEOLOGY. 
 
 THE object of this science is to ascertain as far as possible, the 
 structure of the earth ; the nature of the mineral aggregates 
 which it contains ; the disposition, or arrangement of these ag- 
 gregates, forming the great masses called rocks ; the relative 
 position and nature, of the rocks themselves ; the useful substan- 
 ces which they contain ; the common or natural associations of 
 these with other substances ; the proximate causes, which have, 
 probably, given the mineral masses their present form and posi- 
 tion ; and those, which, operating upon them still, are causing 
 them to undergo alterations, more or less considerable, and are 
 even, in some instances, producing changes, which will ultimately 
 give them new forms of existence. 
 
 POSITIVE AND SPECULATIVE GEOLOGY. 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that geology is erected upon facts, and 
 not upon mere speculation ; yet, speculation is with propriety 
 admitted, as a part of the means of advancing the science ; in 
 some cases it is an important part, but it is of no value if not 
 founded upon facts, and facts must never be contradicted by it. 
 
 Positive geology is incomparably more important than specu- 
 lative, and it proceeds, like the other natural sciences, upon a 
 careful examination of particulars. From particulars, it ascends 
 to generals, and upon these, builds legitimate conclusions. Thus, 
 there is a clear distinction between geological theory and geolog- 
 ical hypothesis. The former draws conclusions directly from 
 facts, and follows strictly the inductive course. It has therefore 
 the same foundation, as general physics ; and its conclusions of- 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 ten approximate to demonstration. The latter also appeals to 
 facts, but, in. a manner less conclusive and it makes suppositions 
 of facts, not actually proved to exist. For instance : when we 
 observe, that vast quantities of aerial agents, especially of steam, 
 are ejected from volcanos, we reason conclusively, that these 
 agents are employed to raise the lava, and that they cause it to 
 flow over the crater or to burst through the side of the mountain ; 
 for, we know, from familiar facts, and experiments, that these 
 agents have power enough to produce such an effect ; we know, 
 that in the case supposed, they are present in sufficient quanti- 
 ties, and we are ignorant of any other causes, that might produce 
 these effects, or that may be believed to exist in these circum- 
 stances. But, when we enquire for the causes of the heat that 
 produces the steam, and evolves the other aerial agents, we are 
 obliged to speculate. We may say, perhaps, that the voltaic or 
 galvanic powers are the principal agents, and we may even render 
 it highly probable, nay, quite credible ; but, we cannot prove the 
 fact, and therefore, our solution rests as an hypothesis ; but, of 
 that class of hypotheses which, being built upon analogous facts, 
 approximate to legitimate theory. 
 
 If we reason concerning the cause of the magnetism of the 
 earth, we may suppose, that there is a great mass of magnetic 
 iron within the planet ; but, this is an hypothesis of a lower or- 
 der than the one just named ; because, we have no analogies to 
 support our conclusion, except that iron can become magnetic 
 and that the mean specific gravity of the earth is about 5., water 
 being 1.; and we invent the cause, on purpose to account for 
 the effect.* 
 
 Positive geology is every day augmenting its already rich stores 
 of facts ; and speculative geology is building its conclusions upon 
 a basis, which time is rendering more and more solid. 
 
 * The beautiful fossil fish found in marly lime stone, in Mount Bolca, inform us that 
 they were living and active beings, just before those hills were deposited, and when 
 the waters stood over the place where they now are ; this is a pregnant truth but, 
 if we say, with some, that they were overwhelmed by a volcanic eruption, we spec- 
 ulate, some would think plausibly, others fancifully. 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 LIMITS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARTH. 
 
 It is only the crust of our earth that we can examine ; a few 
 thousand feet, or, at the utmost, a few miles of its outer rind* 
 We no longer attempt, by a brilliant excursion of the imagina- 
 tion, to account for its present form ; poetry and fiction have 
 ceased to perform the work of philosophy ; those obsolete theo- 
 ries, or rather hypotheses many of them adorned by the elo- 
 quence of powerful minds which substituted waking dreams for 
 the patient examination of facts, are no longer regarded, except 
 as monuments of the restless activity of the human mind ; which 
 is inclined to repose on almost any hypothesis, however visiona- 
 ry, rather than to confess its weakness and ignorance. Buffon 
 could believe, that the earth was struck off from the sun, by the 
 tail of a comet, while it remains to be proved, that a comet has 
 any palpable matter, where we observe that peculiar effulgence ; 
 or even if there is, that the firm globe of the sun, would receive 
 injury from such a collision ; any more than a cannon bail would 
 be broken, by the stroke of an iron rod.* 
 
 A great number of highly qualified men are now occupied 
 in geological researches ; they bring to the investigation, all 
 requisite science the habit of careful induction, and the indus- 
 try and patience, which are demanded ; and the progress made 
 in these enquiries, since the commencement of this century, is 
 wonderful. Districts, provinces, countries and even continents 
 are, more or less, extensively surveyed ; and this kind of research, 
 favored by the propensity for travelling, to which it affords both 
 a high incitement and constant gratification, will, doubtless, con- 
 tinue to be extended, until there shall be no countries unexplored, 
 
 * The geological student may find a spirited outline of the most prominent geo- 
 logical hypotheses in Cuvier's Introduction to Geology ; they may be read as a 
 matter of amusement ; but it will be easily perceived, that they bear no closer 
 analogy to modern geology, than the visions of Alchemy sustain to modern chemis- 
 try. 
 
1.2 'INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 except those from which the scientific traveller is debarred, by in- 
 superable moral or physical impediments. 
 
 Geology is, therefore, now entitled to a rank among the phys- 
 ical sciences, and is entirely worthy of the attention of the great- 
 est minds. 
 
 In grandeur, it falls indeed short of astronomy ; and what 
 physical science does not ; since, astronomy presents to our op- 
 tics, or to our intellectual vision, the " great frame work" of the 
 universe ; we pass from the view of our own planet to the entire 
 planetary system, of which our earth is a member ; and from this 
 system, to other and similar systems ; and to the immense system 
 of systems of suns innumerable, with their attendant worlds, ar- 
 ranged and connected, in perfect harmony ; performing all their 
 revolutions without interference, or irregularity, and illustrating 
 the power and wisdom and sustaining energy, of the omnipotent 
 Creator and Governor. Still, the structure of a single planet is a 
 subject of great interest and of no small grandeur ; especially as 
 we may reason from it analogically, although not indeed con- 
 clusively, respecting the structure of other planets.* 
 
 MODES OF INVESTIGATION AND SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Our direct penetration into the earth, by mines, the deepest 
 excavations of art, has scarcely exceeded three thousand feet or 
 a little more than half a mile, not ^V? P art f tne earth's di- 
 ameter or T 'oo P art of i ts radius. 
 
 It might therefore, at first view seem that we can attain only a 
 very slight knowledge of the internal structure of the planet, and 
 that it would be idle to attempt to reason respecting that of 
 which we can see so little. Still, we are not without probable 
 grounds of reasoning correctly upon this subject, for we have 
 
 * The only positive knowledge which we possess on this subject is derived from 
 the meteoric stones whose foreign origin cannot be reasonably doubted. 
 
 The observations made by telescopes, upon the moon, have discovered a surface 
 similar to that of our earth, but vastly more mountainous and as it is now thought 
 highly volcanic. See our author, Appendix, p. 386. 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 13 
 
 various sources of information and means of perusing the inter- 
 nal disposition of our globe ; the most important are derived, from 
 
 1 . The obliquity of the strata. 
 
 The strata or natural 4 beds of rocks are found in all positions, 
 from the perfectly vertical, to the perfectly horizontal. Were 
 they all horizontal, it is obvious, that the edges could come into 
 view, only on the sides of mountains, in the banks of rivers, in 
 promontories, &c. and in artificial excavations ; and that, in a 
 tolerably level country, we might travel over many leagues, and 
 see very little change in the rock formations. 
 
 But if, as happens in most countries, the strata are inclined to 
 the horizon, then, their edges must of course, come into view, 
 provided their obliquity does not change, and provided the rocks 
 are not concealed by their own ruins, or by the general soil. 
 Thus strata, that in a given situation are many miles below the 
 surface, may, and necessarily, must, (under the limitations above 
 specified) come into view, and crop out, as it is technically term- 
 ed, in some place or another. Could we suppose, that for many 
 leagues of surface, measured on a right line, the soil and diluvi- 
 um were completely removed, from a series of rocks, inclined 
 to the horizon, then, their edges would come fully into view, 
 and we could have no reasonable doubt that we should see 
 an adequate representation of the subterranean geography, as 
 far as those strata extended ; and probably for many leagues 
 it might be even for hundreds of miles beneath the surface. The 
 same remark will of course apply to the strata that are vertical, 
 and indeed to those in all positions, except the perfectly flat ; 
 and even then, we are not without means of studying them in the 
 modes already suggested, or, which will be immediately indicated. 
 
 2. Horizontal position of the strata. 
 
 Strictly, this is a position parallel to the general curve of the 
 earth's surface, considered without reference to its superficial in- 
 
 mixv 
 
14 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 equalities; those inequalities themselves, that is the hills and 
 mountains being supposed to have a similar structure. In that 
 case, it is certain, that were this position strictly preserved and 
 were there no perforations and ruptures of the strata, by artifi- 
 cial or natural causes, we should, except in the sides of hills and 
 mountains, see only the upper stratum of rock, and our knowledge 
 of the geology of the region in question, would be confined, 
 very nearly, to the visible material beneath our feet. 
 
 We are not informed as to the figure of the nucleus of the 
 earth, but, if it be irregular or even not globular, the strata 
 deposited upon its different sides, or surfaces, may exhibit every 
 degree and variety of obliquity ; and the stratum, which, in a giv- 
 en situation, appears horizontal, may in fact, copy, not the great 
 curve of the earth, but a plane, which if continued, would take 
 off a segment of the globe, and thus the edges of the strata 
 would, at their exit from the ground, come distinctly into view, 
 although the surface of the country should be horizontal. 
 
 It is impossible to say whether the earth has a solid nucleus or not. 
 If it has, and this nucleus is any thing but a sphere or a spheroid- 
 al figure, then the various faces which it would present, might 
 cause the superposited strata to assume every position from flat 
 to vertical, and there would be no occasion to admit that strata, 
 originally arranged in one position, had been by force, elevated 
 into another. 
 
 If we admit a nucleus having plane faces, or faces not sphe- 
 roidal, and allow that the crust of the globe has been accu- 
 mulated around the nucleus, then it would be possible, that 
 planes of stratification might extend through a large portion 
 of the planet, and might even jut out on opposite sides. If this 
 suggestion were well founded, then the view of the crust might 
 present a fair specimen of the interior, or at least to a consider- 
 able extent. The nucleus would however, by the supposition, 
 be covered by the superimposed masses, which might, or might 
 not correspond with it in their nature. 
 
 If there be no mistake in the conclusions of the British and 
 French philosophers as to the high mean specific gravity of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 15 
 
 earth, the planet is, on an average, at least twice as heavy as the 
 most common rocks and stones with which we are acquainted. 
 
 Does this discovery imply a prevalence of metals in the interi- 
 or of the earth ? Is the nucleus iron, or at least is iron diffused 
 in great abundance in the interior of the earth, and does this ac- 
 count for the magnetism of the globe, although the magnetism of 
 iron itself is still to be accounted for ? Or does some other metal 
 or do some other metals, of considerable specific gravity, prevail 
 in the constitution of the earth ? If there were known to be a 
 nucleus of silver, gold or platina, there would soon be found ad- 
 venturers hardy enough to attempt even the centre. 
 
 Where we are deficient in positive knowledge, we are at liberty 
 to make suppositions, provided they are consistent with the 
 known constitution of things. 
 
 It is then clearly possible, that matter, of the same kind as that 
 which forms the rocky strata,. on the surface, may exist below, in 
 a degree of condensation, sufficient to account for the high spe- 
 cific gravity of the earth. We are not without examples in nat- 
 ural substances. 
 
 Carbon, in diamond, is three or four times as heavy as in the 
 bitumens, and six or eight times as heavy as in charcoal ; alumine 
 in sapphire sustains a similar relation to the alumine of clays, 
 and so does magnesia in the state of pulverulent native carbonat, 
 or mountain cork, to magnesia in the boracite, or in the chryso- 
 lite, and silex in swimming flint, (quartz nectique) and in rock 
 crystal, are in a similar situation. 
 
 It is possible, therefore, that the very minerals which we see on 
 the surface, may, in the interior of the earth, have a double spe- 
 cific gravity. 
 
 It is a splendid conception, built upon the discoveries of Sir H. 
 Davy and Prof. Berzelius, that the metals of the earths, and not 
 merely the earths themselves may exist in the interior, and thus 
 the nucleus of the planet may be principally a mass of metals, 
 as its crust certainly is of metallic oxids. 
 
 All these views tend to shew, that it is possible, to reconcile 
 the apparently contradictory specific gravity of the surface and of 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 the entire mass of the earth ; and, were this the proper occasion? 
 it might be easily proved, that these views are very interesting to 
 general physics, and particularly to geology, in enabling us to 
 understand the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanos, 
 
 But, for want of positive information as to the state of facts, it is 
 impossible to reason conclusively on this subject, and the recent 
 researches of Cordier tending to prove the existence of a state of 
 igneous fusion in the interior of the earth and at no very profound 
 depth, must, if confirmed, very materially influence our opinions. 
 But philosophers will be slow to admit such appalling conclu- 
 sions from the premises hitherto presented. 
 
 3. Mines. 
 
 The excavations made in mining are the greatest with which 
 we are acquainted. The deepest mine in the world, that of Trut- 
 tenberg in Bohemia, penetrates three thousand feet into the earth. 
 In all mines, the strata are, of course, more or less perforated and 
 broken, so that we obtain the most satisfactory information 
 as to the nature of the rocks and their disposition. Few of the 
 mines of England are in perpendicular descent, deeper than 
 twelve hundred feet (Dolgoath in Cornwall) and none in the Uni- 
 ted States exceed three or four hundred, (Richmond coal mines.) 
 
 4. Wells. 
 
 The evidence afforded by wells is of the same nature. The 
 depth attained rarely equals one hundred feet, but in some in- 
 stances it extends to two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, 
 &c. as at Carisbrooke castle in the isle of Wight, on the plain or 
 valley of London, &c. (Conybeare and Philips.) 
 
 5. Boring for saltwater , salt mines, coal, fyc. 
 
 This is an operation of the same kind, and affords, as regards 
 the rocks, similar evidence, although less distinct ; because the 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 17 
 
 materials are brought up, in the state of powder, or at least of frag- 
 ments, and a very imperfect idea is thus obtained of their original 
 appearance ; sufficient however to enable us to decide on their 
 nature. These operations are often carried on to the depth of 
 several hundred feet. 
 
 6. Roads, canals,* tunnels. 
 
 The two first rarely penetrate to any great depth, but some* 
 times there are deep cuts through diluvium, and even through 
 solid rocks. The former is seen, very strikingly, on the Welland 
 Canal, in Upper Canada ; the cut through the diluvium being, 
 in some places, more than fifty feet, in a stiff tenaceous clay, 
 and the latter circumstance is particularly remarkable at Lock- 
 port on the Erie Canal, where for two miles or more, a very solid, 
 subcrystaline limestone has been excavated by blasting in many 
 places to the depth of thirty feet, disclosing not only the nature of 
 the rock, but many beautiful imbedded minerals. 
 
 Tunnels are not numerous. Every one has heard of those of 
 the Duke of Bridgewater, on the Canal leading from Liverpool to 
 Manchester,! and of that now making under the Thames to serve 
 as a substitute for a bridge. 
 
 It appears that they were not unknown to the ancients. From 
 the Stadium near Athens, situated in a natural defile, the van- 
 quished charioteers retired through a tunnel which perforated a 
 neighboring hill, and thus those who had failed of victory 
 were screened from the sneers and insults of the populace.]: These 
 and all other excavations into the earth add to our means of geo- 
 logical information. 
 
 *The French, during their celebrated expedition to Egypt, under Bonaparte, tra- 
 ced and described the ancient and magnificent canal connecting the Mediterranean 
 and the Red Sea, but which from the ignorance of locks in ancient times could be 
 navigated only when the waters were high, and was therefore nearly useless. 
 
 I That stupendous work of art, the canal tunnel, under Standedge, between Hud- 
 dersfield and Manchester, extends under ground upward of three miles, and is two 
 hundred and twenty yards below the surface. The length of the voyage through 
 the tunnel and back again is six miles and a half. English Newspaper. 
 
 t Dr. Howe's personal communications, Aug. 11, 1828. 
 
 3 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 7. Rivers and other water courses. 
 
 From the humblest brook, that transports the gravel and sand 
 along its current, to those stupendous rivers which force their 
 way through mountain defiles, and appear as if they had burst the 
 barriers that were once opposed to them, we derive geological 
 instruction. The ruins which, in the form of sand and gravel and 
 pebbles and sometimes even bowlder stones, they bear along in 
 their course, or vex with incessant friction, till their angles are 
 rounded or obliterated, afford us valuable information ; and the 
 sections of banks of gravel or of rocky strata which the waters 
 expose, impart to us hints which we may turn to great account. 
 
 In many places, the rivers appear to have formerly flowed at a 
 higher level, than at present, or to be the remnants of lakes whose 
 barriers time has levelled or broken ; and it is no uncommon cir- 
 cumstance to find water-worn ledges of rocks at elevations higher 
 than any place where waters can flow at the present time. This 
 is undeniably the fact in the vicinity of Bellows falls on Connecti- 
 cut River, especially two or three miles below the falls, on the east- 
 ern side ; here the primitive rocks shew the same water-rounded 
 angles, furrowed lines and even pot holes, evidently, formed and 
 polished by incessant friction, as are exhibited at the falls them- 
 selves, where these operations are now incessantly going forward. 
 Similar facts are observable in the transition limestone near the 
 head of lake George, at a considerable elevation above the lake, 
 in ledges over which no water now flows but that of the atmos- 
 phere ; " the angles are rounded and smoothed and there are nu- 
 merous holes worn into the solid rock, sometimes shallow and ir- 
 regular, but frequently deep and cylindrical, and bearing a very ex- 
 act resemblance to those which are common in the ledges, upon 
 which cataracts fall, and appearing to have been produced by the 
 same cause, namely, the wearing agency of water, aided by small 
 stones which it impels in incessant whirling revolutions."* 
 
 The passage of the Shenandoah through the blue ridge of 
 the Connecticut just below Middletown, through the Haddam 
 
 * American Journal, Vol. IV. p. 44. 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 19 
 
 hills, and of the river described by Lewis and Clark through the 
 Rocky mountains, are a few among innumerable examples of this 
 kind. It is very immaterial for geological purposes, whether the 
 rivers have burst their barriers, or merely uncovered the rocks so 
 that their characters can be observed ; for, in either case they 
 contribute to the mass of geological evidence.* 
 
 8. Valleys and defiles. 
 
 These are often deep cut and abrupt and of great extent, ex- 
 posing the stratification on the sides of hills and mountains. The 
 structure must in this manner, be more or less revealed, in every 
 mountainous country, except so far as the sides are covered with 
 soil and ruins. As a large part of the earth is mountainous, pro- 
 vision is thus made on a great scale for judging of the interior of 
 the planet. 
 
 9. Precipices, cliffs, promontories and abrupt banks. 
 
 The shores of the seas and of the great lakes abound with such 
 exhibitions, and all countries except those that are very low pre- 
 sent them in great frequency. Many of them are inaccessible 
 except in boats from the water side, but however viewed, they 
 exhibit the stratification and structure more or less distinctly. 
 
 10. Landslips, Slides and Avulsions. 
 
 The peaceful dweller in the beautiful Isle of Wight, in the 
 English channel, not unfrequently, sees the high chalky cliffs of 
 that coast, that have been undermined by the sea, totter to their 
 
 * Although it cannot be supposed that rivers have generally formed their own 
 beds, there can be no doubt that these currents of water do often increase the depth 
 and alter the form of their channels. The Genessee River and the Niagara River 
 afford fine examples of the exhibition of stratification of river banks, by the wearing 
 effects of water. The banks of these two rivers are often precipitous and of seve- 
 ral hundred feet in elevation, giving- very perfect sections of the strata. 
 
20 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 fall, till they come thundering down ; and even at some distance 
 from the sea, they occasionally slide or slip from their foundations, 
 covering the plains below with ruins. 
 
 The mountaineers of the Alps witness still more stupendous ca- 
 tastrophes. Large mountain masses, and even considerable por- 
 tions of mountains, fall into the valleys and plains, and choke 
 them up, or fill the bosom of lakes, spreading desolation through 
 villages burying their inhabitants in the wreck, or sweeping 
 them away by the overflowing of the waters. 
 
 Even the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the White Moun- 
 tains of New Hampshire, have been the scenes of similar catas- 
 trophes, and the Notch in the White Mountains, will long record 
 the desolations of July, 1826.* 
 
 *The slides in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Green Moun- 
 tains of Vermont, have been recently very remarkable. (See Am. Journal, Vol. XV. 
 Art. II.) There is a grand defile or pass in the White Mountains, called the Notch. 
 The portion which is the grandest, is about five or six miles in length ; it is composed 
 of a double barrier of mountains, rising very abruptly from both sides of the wild 
 roaring river Saco, which frequently washes the feet of both barriers; and some- 
 times there is not room for a single carriage to pass between the stream and the 
 mountains ; but the road is cut into the mountain itself. This double barrier, rises 
 on each side, to the height of nearly half a mile in perpendicular altitude, often ex- 
 ceeding this height ; and it is capped, here and there, by castellated turrets of rocks, 
 standing high above the continued ridges ; these are not straight, but are formed into 
 numerous zigzag turns, which frequently cut off the view, and seem to imprison the 
 observer in a vast, gloomy gulf. 
 
 The sides of these mountains are deeply furrowed and scarred, by the tremendous 
 effects of the memorable deluge of August 28th, 1826, which, on the night succeed- 
 ing that day, destroyed, in a moment, the Willey family, nine in number, and left 
 not one to tell their story. They occupied a lonely house in the wildest part of the 
 Notch, at the foot of the mountains; it was a resting place for travellers. For two 
 seasons before, the mountains had been very dry, and on the morning of Aug. 28th, 
 it commenced raining very hard, with strong tempestuous wind ; the storm lasted 
 through that day and the succeeding night, and when it ceased, the road was found 
 obstructed by innumerable avalanches of mountain ruins, which rendered it impossi- 
 ble to pass, except on foot. The first person who came to the Willey house, found 
 it empty of its inhabitants, and in the course of a few days the mangled bodies of 
 seven out of nine, were discovered a short distance below, buried beneath the 
 drift wood and mountain ruins, on the bank ot the Saco, or rather in the midst of 
 ivhat was for the time, a vast raging torrent, uniting one mountain barrier to the 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 21 
 
 It is obvious therefore, that our means of perusing the struc- 
 ture of the interior of the earth are not so scanty, or so imperfect, 
 as might at first view appear. 
 
 This at least may be said with truth, that, although we cannot 
 prove what is the constitution of the earth one thousand, or even 
 one hundred miles from its surface, we have means in our power 
 of deciding upon the nature of the crust. Whether in one quarter 
 of the world or in another, we ascend the loftiest mountains, and 
 examine the awful peaks on which the sunbeams shine, first and 
 last, as the sun rises and sets, and on which the storms of ages 
 have spent their fury ; or whether we descend into the deepest 
 mines, and observe the strata uncovered, for the first time, since 
 their formation ; in whatever country ; under whatever circum- 
 stances, we examine the earth, we are led to the important con- 
 
 other. The effects of the torrents, which on that occasion descended from the 
 mountains, now form a most conspicuous and interesting feature in the scenery. 
 
 The avalanches were very numerous ; they were not, however, ruptures of the 
 main foundation rock of the mountain, but slides, from very steep declivities ; be- 
 ginning, in many instances, at the very mountain top, and carrying down, in one 
 promiscuous and frightful ruin, shrubs and forests, and the earth which sustained 
 them ; stones and rocks innumerable, and many of great size, such as would fill, 
 each, a common apartment : the slide took every thing with it, down to the solid 
 mountain rock, and being produced by torrents of water, which appear to have burst, 
 like water spouts upon the mountains, after they had been thoroughly soaked with 
 heavy rains, thus loosening all the materials that were not solid, and the trees push- 
 ed and wrung by fierce winds, acted as so many levers, and prepared every thing 
 for the awful catastrophe. No tradition existed of any slide in former times, and 
 such as are now discovered to have anciently happened, had been completely veiled 
 by forest growth and shrubs. At length, on the 28th of June, two months before 
 the painful event, there was an avalanche, not far from the Willey house, which so far 
 alarmed the family, that they erected an encampment a little distance from their 
 dwelling, intending it as a place of refuge. On the fatal night, it was impenetrably 
 dark, and frightfully tempestuous ; the solitary family had retired to rest, in their 
 humble dwelling, six miles from the nearest human creature. The avalanches de- 
 scended in every part of the gulf, for a distance of two miles ; and a very heavy one 
 began on the mountain top, immediately above the house, and took its course in a direct 
 line towards it; the sweeping torrent, a river from the clouds, and a river full of 
 earth, stones, trees, and rocks, rushed to the house, and marvellously divided within 
 six feet of it, and just behind it, and passed on either side, sweeping away the stable 
 and horses, and completely encircling the dwelling, but leaving it untouched. At 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 elusion, that the great features are drawn upon the same plan, 
 and that similar laws have governed the whole series of forma- 
 tions. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Fruits or results of the observations made on the structure of 
 the crust, in consequence of the use of all the means in our 
 power. 
 
 The earth is not (as ignorant persons usually suppose) rudis 
 indigestaque moles, a mere rude and unarranged heap of rocks, 
 and minerals, grouped together without order, without plan, and 
 without a possibility of being rationally investigated. 
 
 Order, so distinctly observed in the mechanism of the uni- 
 verse ; in the stellary and planetary systems ; in the admirable 
 
 this time, it is supposed the family issued from their door, and were swept away by 
 the torrent. 
 
 Had they remained, they would have been entirely safe. They probably did re- 
 main amidst the war of wind and rain and mountain torrents, and the tremendous 
 crash of the forests earth and rocks, which for miles around them were rushing 
 down in one wide scene of desolation, and with an astounding noise and concussion, 
 of which, we can form no adequate conception; until the evident and near approach 
 of the ruin immediately behind the house, left them, apparently, no alternative, but 
 to fly from instant death. Even now (May 20, 1828,) almost two years after the 
 event, there is a great rampart of earth stones rocks and trees, piled up within 
 five feet of the house, and behind it and making a circuit round it, as if repelled by 
 an invisible power. But the little green in front, and east of the house was undis- 
 turbed, and a flock of sheep, (a part of the possessions of the family) rested on this 
 small spot of ground and were found there the next morning in safety although 
 the torrent which has been mentioned as dividing just above the house, and forming 
 a curve on both sides, had swept completely around them, and again united below, 
 and covered the meadows and orchard with ruins, which remain there to this hour. 
 This catastrophe presents a very striking example of sudden diluvial action, and en- 
 ables one to form some feeble conception of the universal effects of the vindictive 
 deluge which once ravaged every plain and defile, and swept over every mountain. 
 In the present instance, there was not one avalanche only, but there were many. 
 The most extensive single one, was on the other side of the barrier which forms the 
 northern boundary of the Notch. It is described as having slid, in the whole, three 
 miles with an average breadth of a quarter of a mile ; it overwhelmed a bridge, and 
 filled a river course, turning the stream, and now presents an unparalleled mass of 
 ruins. There are places on the declivities of the mountains in the Notch, where 
 acres of the steep sides were swept bare of their forests, and of every moveable 
 thing, and the naked rock is now exposed to view. 
 
INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 23 
 
 equilibrium of projection and gravitation ; of cohesion and ex- 
 pansion ; of cohesion and chemical affinity ; in the beautiful 
 structure and exact economy of animals and vegetables ; and in 
 the still more wonderful phenomena of mind, does not end there : 
 it pervades all the other works of God ; and in this rude, uncon- 
 scious earth, is not less capable of proof, (although that proof is 
 less obvious) than in the other departments of his universal do- 
 minion. 
 
 Still, while this regularity is thus manifest, and is the prevailing 
 character, it must not be forgotten, that the earth exhibits, in eve- 
 ry country, decisive proofs of violence, derangement and disloca- 
 tion of strata ; indicating the operation of various catastrophes. 
 For example, in mines, strata are found, whose continuity is bro- 
 
 In the greater number of instances however, the avalanches began almost at the 
 mountain top, or high upon its slope. The excavation commenced, generally, as 
 soon as there was any thing moveable in a trench of a few yards in depth, and of 
 a few rods in width, and descended down the mountains widening and deepening 
 till it became a great chasm, like a vast irregular hollow cone, with its apex near the 
 mountain top, and its base as its foot, and there spread out into a wide and deep 
 mass of ruins, of transported earth, gravel stones, rocks and forest trees. Letter of 
 the Editor, written on the spot, May 20, 1828. 
 
 A party of gentlemen who assended Mount Washington, the next day after the 
 the storm, counted thirty slides on the western side of the mountain. They began near 
 the line where the soil and vegetation terminate, and growing wider as they decen- 
 ded, were estimated to contain more than a hundred acres. These were all on the 
 western side of the mountains. They were composed of the whole surface of the 
 earth with all its growth of woods, and its loose rocks, to the depth of fifteen, twenty, 
 and thirty feet. And wherever the slides of the two projecting mountains met for- 
 ming a vast ravine, the depth was still greater. In some places the road was excava- 
 ted to the depth of fifteen and twenty feet ; and in others it was covered with earth, 
 and rocks, and trees, to as great a height. In the Notch and along the deep 
 defile below it, for a mile and a half, to the Notch House, and as far as could be seen 
 beyond it, no appearance of the road, except in one place for two or three rods, could 
 be discovered. The steep sides of the mountain, first on one hand, then on the oth- 
 er, and then on both, had slid down into this narrow passage, and formed a continu- 
 ed mass from one end to the other. Letter of Rev. Carlos Wilcox. 
 
 The account of the slides in the Green Mountains will be quoted in connexion with 
 the notice of diluvial action, in the latter part of this sketch. 
 
24 INTRODUCTORY VIEWS. 
 
 ken ; suddenly, at a particular depth, a certain rock, which is 
 observed, on one side of a shaft or fissure, disappears on the oth- 
 er, and some different rock comes in its place ; yet the first rock 
 may be found again, either above or below the place where it 
 disappeared, and with it all the attendant series of rocks, which 
 in like manner were dislocated. 
 
 Again, a certain series of rocks may be cut across, by a differ- 
 ent species of rock, which shall completely separate all the suc- 
 cessive strata, and yet on both sides they may be found re-appear- 
 ing either at the same elevation, or at a different one. The mat- 
 ter which fills the fissure is technically called a dyke. 
 
 Again, strata are sometimes found at particular places tor- 
 tuous or winding, or angular ; although they may, in general, be 
 regular, thus indicating, as many suppose, the application of 
 force to them, and their disturbance by a mechanical cause. 
 Notwithstanding these and other similar irregularities, 
 
 A general regularity of arrangement has been observed in the 
 structure of the globe. 
 
 The great mass of the crust of the earth, and probably of its 
 entire solidity, is, in every country made up of rocks which have 
 the following characteristics. 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 I. The most important fundamental rocks of our globe are 
 composed, in general, of crystaline materials, bearing every ap- 
 pearance of having been deposited, from a state of prevailing re- 
 pose, and chiefly by the exertion of chemical affinities ; they are 
 made up principally of imperfect and confused crystals, or of 
 parts, having more or less of a crystaline structure, adjusted to 
 each other, either confusedly or by salient and re-entering angles, 
 so as to form a mass of continuous matter ; furnished however t 
 sometimes with cavities, which are occasionally lined with large 
 and beautiful crystals. Every thing in the appearance of these 
 rocks implies a previous state of chemical mobility, (not of 
 mechanical suspension) and the only powers with which we are 
 acquainted, that are at all equal to the effect, are water and 
 fire, aided by various saline, alkaline, acid, and other energetic 
 chemical agents, which, in large quantities, we now find actually 
 entering into the constitution of these rocks, and of other terrestri- 
 al masses, and which were therefore originally provided in the 
 grand store-house of created materials. 
 
 Few of those who would employ fire to form the primitive, as 
 well as the volcanic and trap rocks, go so far, as to exclude the 
 operation of water, or of chemical agents, of which water may 
 have been the basis and vehicle. Indeed, it is generally agreed, 
 that, judging from the appearances of things, we must conclude, 
 that the earth was originally, and for a long time, submerged, 
 and that its crust at least, has been in a soft and impressible state, 
 if not partially or wholly in solution. 
 
 Geology declares, that the original, or at least early state of the 
 surface of the planet, was that of a watery abyss ; and the book of 
 Genesis, in the concise account which is there exhibited of the 
 origin of things, reveals the same fact, as well as the recession 
 of the waters, by which the dry land was made to appear. 
 
 4 
 
 1 7 711 
 
26 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 We may therefore take it for granted, that the aqueous abyss 
 preceded the habitable condition of the earth, and we are at 
 liberty to reason upon its probable constitution and possible 
 effects. 
 
 It was evidently a fluid of very different properties from mere 
 water. It doubtless contained all the chemical agents, not only 
 that are soluble in water, but also that are soluble in a compound 
 fluid, consisting of water, and of other agents still more active. 
 The acids alone would give it great solvent powers, particularly 
 in relation to the alkalies the metallic oxides, and several of the 
 earths ; the alkalies alone would impart a similar efficiency, es- 
 pecially with respect to silex, which is not readily soluble in any 
 acid except one ; acids may have prevailed at one time, and al- 
 kalies at another ; and even if acids and alkalies, and acids and 
 earths, and acids and metallic oxides, had been present at the 
 same time, and had mutually combined, so as to form saline com- 
 pounds, these compounds, as far as they remained in solution, 
 would impart to the fluid peculiar and increased solvent powers ; 
 and those compounds which, from their insolubility, were precipi- 
 tated, would be of course removed, and would not be in the way 
 to impede other agencies. In the constitution of mineral bodies, 
 we find the greater part of the most active chemical agents ; the 
 powerful acids, the sulphuric, the muriatic, the nitric, the phos- 
 phoric and the fluoric ; and the carbonic, although not powerful, 
 is abundant. The alkali soda exists in vast abundance, and of- 
 ten combined with no other acid than the carbonic ; while po- 
 tassa, as well as soda, is found in combination with other princi- 
 ples in a great many minerals, and lithia in several. The alkalies 
 are largely, and the alkaline earths are considerably soluble in 
 water ; all the earths are easily soluble in acids, except silex, and 
 even this is powerfully attacked by fluoric acid, and, under certain 
 circumstances, is not unaffected by some other acids. All the me- 
 tallic oxides are soluble, either in acids or alkalies; the metals com- 
 bine readily with chlorine; carbon and the other combustibles be- 
 come soluble by combination with each other, and with oxigen, 
 or chlorine, or iodine ; and we may reasonably presume, that as 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 27 
 
 these bodies came from the hand of the Creator, they were in a 
 condition to act with intense energy, and that innumerable solu- 
 tions, decompositions and precipitations, took place at a period 
 when elementary action had full play, and the great agents, 
 encountering each other at every turn, gradually developed 
 the new order of things. It is of course difficult to say, pre- 
 cisely what was the condition, and what were the qualities of 
 that early ocean, that primitive abyss, whose existence and 
 sway it is impossible to deny ; for while decisive facts declare 
 it to the mere philosopher, revelation unfolds it to the believer, 
 and both conspire to establish the truth in the minds of that 
 large and respectable class of individuals, who combine both 
 these characters in one. 
 
 It appears then that the solubility of all the existing materials 
 that form the crust of the globe ; their solubility either in their 
 elementary forms, or in their proximate or complex combina- 
 tions, is a truth clearly demonstrable, and actually demonstrated ; 
 and that the only serious difficulty is found, in attributing to the 
 quantity of waters that now exist, within our knowledge, sufficient 
 power to suspend all the materials of those rocks, that bear marks 
 of deposition from a state of chemical solution. 
 
 On this point, perhaps nothing satisfactory can be said ; but 
 we may ask, who knows what were the depth and the quantity of 
 the waters of the primitive abyss ; how much water might (as 
 the formations were going on) have been exhaled, even to 
 other regions ; how much might have been decomposed to 
 afford the noble, and almost universally diffused elements, of this 
 fluid, to the various nascent bodie^, into whose constitution oxi- 
 gen and hydrogen were destined to enter ; and how much might 
 have been received into cavities* in the earth, to await a future 
 call, to deluge the surface anew. 
 
 * We may have occasion to mention again the idea of cavities in the earth, a 
 supposition which some may think is excluded, by its high specific gravity. 
 There is, however, no incompatibility in the two opinions. The amount of 
 water requisite to cover, half a mile deep, all the existing mountains, would occupy 
 
28 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 It is worthy of observation, that quartz, feldspar, and mica, 
 the minerals which form the greater part of the three most im- 
 portant primitive rocks, namely, granite, gneiss, and mica slate, 
 are composed mainly of silex and alumine. Now the silex, espe- 
 cially in a state of minute division, is entirely and readily soluble 
 in the fixed alkalies, and so is alumine, with even greater facility : 
 alumine is also very readily soluble in acids ; silex is soluble in flu- 
 oric acid, and can become even gaseous in that acid, and, if mi- 
 nutely divided, it is soluble in some other acids. Modern analy- 
 sis has discovered notable quantities of potash and soda in both 
 feldspar and mica ; and fluoric acid in the latter, so that it is 
 proved that the necessary solvents were actually present at the 
 time of the formation of these minerals, and therefore entered 
 into their constitution. Alkali exists elsewhere also, in sufficient 
 abundance for the solution of silex and alumine ; for that portion 
 of alkali, which is now in solid combination in the minerals, 
 that enter into the constitution of the primitive rocks, would 
 have done but little towards the solution of the earths in ques- 
 tion. 
 
 The activity of most of the early chemical agents, and of all of 
 them if subjected to pressure, would have been much increased 
 by a high temperature. There can be no reason why we should 
 suppose, that those causes* which now feed the fires of nearly 
 two hundred active volcanos, were dormant in the youth of the 
 planet. On the contrary, the numerous extinct or quiescent vol- 
 canos, of unquestionable character, record with irrefragable evi- 
 dence, the energy and extent of primeval fire, operating both as 
 an auxiliary to solution, and in its own proper agency by fusion; 
 and that, without taking into view the trap rocks, which, if finally 
 
 but a small fractional part of the cubical contents of the earth, (only ^ j part) and the 
 remaining solid parts may still be sufficiently dense to give the required specific grav- 
 ity. The supposition is more at war with the hypothesis of central igneous fluidity ; 
 but even these two suppositions are still reconcilable. 
 
 * Causes which will be considered under the head of volcanos. 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 29 
 
 admitted to have had an igneous origin, will greatly fortify this 
 view of the subject. 
 
 When the planet was covered by an aqueous abyss, all volca- 
 nos must have been submarine, as many now are. They would 
 all therefore act under vast pressure, a pressure incomparably 
 transcending any thing effected by modern experiment, and the 
 heat thus accumulated must have given any desired activity to 
 water and to watery solutions of the great chemical agents. 
 
 While therefore provision is made, in this manner, upon estab- 
 lished mechanical and chemical laws, for solution on the greatest 
 scale of magnitude, anU with the greatest possible energy of action, 
 we may suppose chemical depositions to have been going on con- 
 temporaneously or subsequently, either confusedly, as in granite, 
 or in successive layers, as in gneiss and mica slate ; and the im- 
 bedded minerals of the primitive rocks, the garnets, the stauro- 
 tides, the tourmalins, the beryls, and others, were doubtless, con- 
 temporaneous crystalizations ; their elements being in solution in 
 the same fluid, and uniting by the force of their peculiar affini- 
 ties, formed the minute bodies, the integrant atoms, whose con- 
 cretion ultimately produced the various crystaline solids, which 
 adorn the early formations of the globe. 
 
 Water and fire and pressure and all the great chemical agents 
 may thus have conspired, as means in his hands, to execute the 
 great purposes of the Creator, in effecting the arrangement of 
 the crust of the planet. 
 
 It becomes easy also to admit that all those catastrophes, which 
 can reasonably be attributed to this period, may have happened. 
 
 Igneous agency, the parent of earthquakes, acting beneath the 
 rocks already formed, and beneath the incumbent abyss, might 
 produce fractures, heavings, dislocations and distortions, tortuous 
 flexions, injections of veins and dykes, subsidence and elevation 
 of strata, and all the irregularities technically called faults by the 
 miners. Even the trap rocks themselves may have been thrown up 
 beneath the primevaFocean ; they may have broken through the 
 strata and congealed above or between or among them, in ridges, 
 peaks or flats ; or they may have been injected in dykes or veins, 
 
30 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 or been driven, laterally, between the strata, rending them asun- 
 der, as if cleft by wedges.* 
 
 Although in giving this concise sketch of the possible and prob- 
 able qualities, powers and effects of the primeval abyss, we have 
 endeavored to adhere closely to acknowledged facts and princi- 
 ples as established by experience and sound reasoning, we do not 
 pretend to claim for our speculations the verisimilitude of history. 
 But, the only credible history which exists furnishes a record, 
 important alike to philosophy and religion ; we find in the plan- 
 et itself, the proof that the record is true ; we examine by the 
 light of science the modus operandi and we think we can trace 
 its development ; although we do not confidently aver, that the 
 events actually happened as we have supposed, we endeavor to 
 prove, that the constitution of things and the records of evidence, 
 which the planet affords, accord with our supposition. Thus we 
 honor the Divine Author by tracing the operation of his laws ; we 
 would not slur them over under the vague term of nature, while 
 we admit not only creative power, but arranging wisdom.t 
 
 * These remarks have reference of course, to the trap rocks that appear in primi- 
 tive regions, but it is obvious that a similar train of reasoning is applicable, (mutatis 
 mutandis) to the trap rocks which are associated with the more recent formations. 
 If these rocks are the offspring of subterranean fire, there appears no reason why 
 their date should be restricted to any one series of rocks, and we actually find them 
 associated with all. 
 
 t The author of this sketch is, in no degree, reluctant to avow his full adoption of 
 the Baconian and Newtonian mode of reasoning on natural phenomena, as regards 
 their ultimate connexion with the Creator and Governor of the universe. He would 
 not force moral and religious topics into an unnatural association, with physical sub- 
 jects, and he thinks it contrary both to good policy and good taste, to act the moralist 
 on every occasion, and thus to render trite and perhaps offensive, ideas which, more 
 cautiously and less frequently introduced, might have left a happy impression. But 
 he holds, with Newton, that Natural Philosophy sustains an indissoluble connexion 
 with the Deity, as the first cause of all things, and as the final cause which must 
 forever terminate every series of secondary causes, by which we attempt to account 
 for natural phenomena. 
 
 This reference is therefore not less proper on physical than on moral subjects, al- 
 though the liberty should be more sparingly and cautiously used. Surely, if on any 
 subject of natural science this course i? proper, it is in relation to geology, one of 
 whose primary objects, is to trace the operation of the Creator's laws, in the arrange- 
 ment of the crust of the planet, which is our present abode. 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 31 
 
 II. The rocks in question, namely, the primitive, lie below the 
 others, and therefore were deposited Jirst ; they generally succeed 
 each other, in a certain order, supporting the superincumbent 
 rocks, but they still occasionally break through them all, and rise, 
 so as form the highest peaks and ridges of our globe. 
 
 It is self-evident that the lower the rock, the older it must be, 
 just as the foundations of a house must be deposited before the 
 superstructure can be added.* 
 
 A miracle, it is true, could substitute one rock for another, but 
 we are reasoning from established natural causes, and not from 
 miracles, and we know not of any cause that would force one 
 rock into a position beneath another, except volcanic or igneous 
 agency, which, it is admitted might do it to a certain small ex- 
 tent, but never on a great scale. Circumstances would also in- 
 dicate the catastrophe, such as the marks of violence and the al- 
 tered appearance which the neighboring rocks would exhibit. 
 Except the single case of intrusion by volearuc power, it would be 
 equally true of deposition, from any cause whether aqueous, me- 
 chanical or igneous, that the upper rocks must be the most recent. 
 
 It is quite superfluous to say, that several rocks may have been 
 deposited at once ; it is true that several may have been deposit- 
 ed from the same general agencies, constituting a suite or forma- 
 tion, but it would still be true that there would be succession, ei- 
 ther tardy or rapid. 
 
 III. The primitive rocks contain no organized bodies ; not a 
 fish or a shell, a plant or any thing ever endowed with life, or 
 any fragment, relic or impress, of any such body is ever found 
 
 * Contemporaneous crystalization might happen through large masses of the same 
 species of rock, but is not credible with respect to successions of rocks of different 
 kinds, as of saccharoidal limestone in gneiss, serpentine in clay slate, &c. 
 
 Even igneous depositions, it would seem, must require succession ; one igneous 
 tide bursting through, after another had flowed and congealed ; and an igneous rock 
 forcing its way, in fusion, through rocks of unquestionable aqueous or mechanical ori- 
 gin. 
 
 Who would believe, for instance, that the greenstone trap of Salisbury Craig at 
 Edinburgh, or of the East and West rocks at New Haven, (Connecticut,) was not 
 deposited after the sand stone and conglomerate rock upon which they repose ! 
 
32 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 in them ; this fact, with others to be mentioned afterwards, 
 evinces that the fundamental rocks were deposited before the 
 creation of living beings, and that this substratum was laid for 
 the purpose of preparing the globe for its great destination 
 that of becoming a suitable habitation for beings endowed with 
 life. 
 
 This argument is of a negative character, but still it appears to 
 be conclusive, and it would be conclusive to any extent ; for, 
 were all rocks destitute of organized remains, it would be equally 
 fair to conclude, that they were all deposited before that inter- 
 esting epoch in the creation, when life began to appear upon the 
 planet. 
 
 The argument then, respecting the relative antiquity of the 
 primitive rocks becomes still stronger, when we have ascertain- 
 ed that there are numerous rocks which contain organized re- 
 mains both of animals and plants, but that they are never the 
 lowest rocks, and that they are rarely highly crystaline in their 
 structure, at least they are not often so in a degree to make them 
 compare with the rocks that lie still lower. 
 
 But suppose that a rock having a constitution like that of the 
 primitive, should be found lying upon another which is deci- 
 dedly not primitive, for example granite on limestone contain- 
 ing organized remains ; shall we continue to call this upper rock 
 primitive ? Certainly not. We must then either give it a new 
 name and refer it to a new class, or allow that there are rocks of 
 that particular name, which are not primitive but of a more re- 
 cent date. 
 
 Such is the granite discovered by Von Buch in Norway near 
 Christiania, provided there be no mistake. It is said to be a true 
 granite reposing upon a limestone containing orthoceroe and oth- 
 er indubitable animals. Allowing the reality of this so called 
 granite, it is a solitary case, and need not therefore disturb our 
 general arrangement. If it be an exception it doubtless had a 
 particular cause. 
 
 But should we find granite containing fish or shells or plants, 
 would it be a primitive rock ? Clearly not. We should then 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 33 
 
 as before, either conclude that it was not granite, or we should 
 allow that it was a transition or secondary granite. No such 
 granite has however been discovered and probably none ever 
 will be.* 
 
 IV. The fundamental rocks are rarely horizontal ; they are 
 usually inclined more or less to the horizon, frequently at a high 
 angle, and sometimes they are found vertical, that is, their stra- 
 ta are on edge ; but the progress of research has evinced, that 
 the rocks of the different classes are occasionally found in all po- 
 sitions. 
 
 It is no longer considered as true, that position, in relation to 
 the angle formed with the horizon, is decisively characteristic of 
 the different classes of rocks. Still the distinction is not entirely 
 abolished, nor entirely without utility. Secondary rocks are usu- 
 ally horizontal, or not many degrees from that position ; primi- 
 tive rocks are perhaps always inclined, often highly so, and al- 
 most never quite flat, and the transition strata are generally in an 
 intermediate position. In the formations of North America, it is 
 however much more common to find primitive rocks at low levels, 
 and at moderate angles of elevation, than in Europe. 
 
 In observing rocks, their position with regard to inclination, 
 is always to be taken into view, but it would be unsafe to rely 
 upon this character alone. The mineralogical constitution, geo- 
 logical connexion, and extraneous and other foreign contents of 
 the rock, (if any are present,) must also be taken into account in 
 judging of its geological character. 
 
 V. The fundamental rocks are called primitive, by some pri- 
 mary or primordial, in allusion to their relative antiquity ; in ge- 
 
 * Rocks consisting of the ruins of granite, are sometimes mistaken for true granite, 
 and it requires some experience to avoid being deceived. A few years since, I receiv- 
 ed an account, from a remote interior state on this continent, of granite containing 
 bituminous coal and fossil wood. I could not admit the correctness of the observa- 
 lion, and accordingly discovered, on receiving specimens of the so called granite, 
 that the rock was a sand stone made up indeed of quartz, feldspar and mica, but 
 merely in the state of loose and mechanical aggregation, constituting a genuine 
 sand stone, which had probably been formed from the decomposition of granite, 
 
 5 
 
34 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 olpgy, this fact is always determined by their position and con- 
 stitution. 
 
 The term is not intended to involve theoretical considerations, 
 any farther than it designates order of time ; and whatever theo- 
 retical views we may adopt, we must admit not only time, but 
 order of time. As to the amount of time, geology alone is not 
 in a condition to decide absolutely ; judging from phenomena 
 alone, different events or effects would require periods of very 
 different length. 
 
 If we could admit that granite, for instance, might crystalize 
 through a very great space, in a short time ; it would still be 
 incredible, that granite and its cognate rocks, gneiss and mi- 
 ca slate, and clay slate ; then graywacke and other early frag- 
 mented rocks ; then anthracite coal, with transition slates, con- 
 taining impressions of fern leaves and of trilobites ; then transi- 
 tion limestones, with orthocera3 ; encrinites, and corals ; then 
 bituminous coal, with slates containing fish, and sandstones 
 containing culmiferous plants ; it would be quite incredible, 
 that all these widely different deposits, should have been pro- 
 duced, by the same state of things, and laid down at the same 
 time. 
 
 VI. The principal primitive rocks are granite, gneiss and mi- 
 ca slate and other slaty rocks, granular limestone, &c. and they 
 generally occur in a particular order, granite being lowest. 
 
 It is not intended on this occasion, to enumerate all the rocks, 
 or to describe any of them minutely. In studying geology, it will 
 probably be found the most convenient and intelligible course, 
 to pursue a particular rock through its entire history, and thus 
 to present a connected view of it, rather than to mention it, in 
 part, under the primitive, then again perhaps in the transition, 
 and then again in the secondary and even in the tertiary. 
 
 Limestone is in this condition. 
 
 We find it indubitably primitive, then transition, then seconda- 
 ry and lastly tertiary, and its ruins are sometimes found even in 
 alluvial or diluvial regions. Slate has similar characters. The 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 35 
 
 fragmented rocks are found in all the classes except the primi- 
 tive,* and so of other rocks in a greater or less degree. 
 
 VII. The epoch of the deposition of the primitive rocks ap- 
 pears to be coincident with that of the early prevalence of a 
 primeval ocean. 
 
 This abyss of waters which existed at an early unknown peri- 
 od, before the time of tiie final arrangement! of the surface, 
 which preceded the creation of man, and continued, we may 
 suppose for an unlimited time, is just such a state of things 
 as is demanded for the deposition of the primitive rocks, and 
 such an one as geologists}: generally, both admit and require. 
 In this period, the primitive rocks were probably deposited, and 
 nothing appears to forbid the admission, that there was time 
 enough for the formation of all their crystals, and for their reg- 
 ular arrangement. 
 
 The marks of disruption, dislocation and derangement, which 
 the primitive, as well as other rocks present, justify us in the 
 opinion, that there were occasional catastrophes, interrupting the 
 general order of events, and producing local disorder ; thus, 
 strata, may have sunk by subsidence, for want of adequate sup- 
 port, or been torn asunder by earthquakes, or lifted by submarine 
 volcanos ; these are however subordinate events, and do not radi- 
 cally alter or subvert, although they may modify our general views. 
 
 Some however, imagine, that entire mountain ranges, and 
 even entire continents, have been raised by the force of subterra- 
 nean fire, and there seems, as already suggested, no inconsistency 
 or improbability involved in the admission, that igneous and 
 aqueous agency may have been concomitant and co-operative, 
 
 * Dr. MacCulloch admits sandstone into the primitive, but in this he appears to be 
 nearly or quite alone, and it is certainly very desirable, and also very practicable, 
 to avoid so embarrassing an anomaly. 
 
 t Some prefer to consider it as a reformation from the wreck of a former world, 
 or more correctly speaking, from the wreck of a former state of the present world. 
 
 t This statement requires but little qualification, even as regards the geologists 
 who imagine a vast internal fire, by which the primitive rocks were deposited from 
 a state of fusion, for they are obliged to call in the aid of water for the first deposi- 
 tion of the materials of the primitive rocks, and of course for the secondary. 
 
36 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 and that, by their alternating, and conflicting, and modifying ef- 
 fects, they rnay have produced the actual state of things on the 
 surface of the globe. 
 
 A vast mass of evidence has been accumulated, and is con- 
 stantly increasing, which evinces that internal fire still prevails to 
 a great extent in the interior of our planet, and its effects ap- 
 pear to have been the greatest, and the most extensive, in the 
 earliest periods. Volcanic mountains are known to have risen, 
 even in modern times, from the bosom of the ocean,* and 
 permanent islands have been, and are still existing, where, in 
 former ages, the sea raged uncontrolled. The first postulate 
 of the philosophers of fire, is therefore proved to be possi- 
 ble, but, where mechanical causes are largely concerned, it 
 does not follow, that, because an effect of a certain extent has ta- 
 ken place, that therefore one vastly greater has happened. 
 
 Trap rocks may have been produced by subterranean and sub- 
 marine fire, but it does not, therefore follow, that a continent has 
 risen from the deep. If so, either it was accumulated by suc- 
 cessive submarine eruptions, or it was lifted, already formed, 
 by subterranean expansion, and in either case, we may ask, 
 whence were the materials supplied ; and if supplied from the 
 regions immediately beneath, what fills the void, and if not 
 filled, what more than Roman or Gothic arches, are provided to 
 sustain the enormous weight of a continent, and to prevent its 
 plunging anew into the abyss, and carrying down, like a sinking 
 ship, all that are embarked upon it. Is it arched over, from side 
 to side, of the tremendous cavern, resting firmly upon the abut- 
 ments of the solid earth ? But what security is there, that sub- 
 terranean fire will not melt these abutments down, and under- 
 mine the incumbent continent ? 
 
 The primitive rocks present to the eye of one who has been 
 accustomed to examine the results of chemical deposition, very 
 decisive proofs of having been in that state of mobility, which 
 leaves the particles at liberty, to unite according to the laws of 
 corpuscular attraction ; the heterogeneous particles being con- 
 
 * In the Grecian Archipelago, near the Azores, &c. See Am. Jour. Vol. XIII. 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 37 
 
 nected by chemical, and the homogeneous by mechanical attrac- 
 tion. Thus, in felspar the silex, composed of silicium, or silicon 
 and oxigen the alurnine, of aluminum and oxigen the potassa 
 or soda, of potassium or sodium and oxigen the lime, of calcium 
 and oxigen, and the oxid of iron, of iron and oxigen, would be 
 formed, supposing these to be the ultimate elements of the min- 
 eral, first by their uniting, chemically, to form these binary com- 
 pounds ; then these binary compounds would still farther unite r 
 but still chemically, to form the integrant particles of the miner- 
 al, and these particles united mechanically, by cohesion, would 
 form the mineral itself. 
 
 The same reasoning may be applied to every variety of rocks 
 and minerals. Limestone, consisting for its immediate princi- 
 ples, of lime, carbonic acid and water, contains, for its ultimate 
 elements, according to the present state of our knowledge, cal- 
 cium, carbon, hidrogen and oxigen ; the latter principle being 
 united with each of the former ones, so as to produce the lime, 
 (oxigen and calcium,) the carbonic acid, (carbon and oxigen,) 
 and the water, (oxigen and hidrogen.) If the limestone were 
 a magnesian one, then we must add oxigen and magnesium, and 
 so of other earths, as silex or alumine, if they were present. 
 
 How far back, and how near to the isolated, independent state* 
 we are to trace each element, we cannot determine. Whether 
 the elements were created, in the first place, in a state of perfect 
 freedom, and their earliest movement was, not so much, that of 
 elemental war, as of elemental combination ; or whether, they 
 were combined in pairs, and those pairs again combined, to form 
 more complex results, we can never know with certainty ; and 
 all our suggestions on this subject being necessarily hypothetical, 
 ought of course to be concisely stated. 
 
 But the discussion of these questions, which might easily be 
 extended to the most complex rocks, and to all their imbedded 
 minerals, however curious and even interesting, is, in no way 
 material to our proceeding to reason intelligibly may we not 
 say plausibly, or even conclusively, upon the act or process, 
 which must, according to physical laws, have preceded the con- 
 cretion of the materials of the primitive rocks. 
 
3,3 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 Suppose the elements which are to form granite, to have 
 already united, and the previous fluidity, whether of solution 
 or fusion, or both r to have established a state of things favor- 
 able to the grand result, the formation of the different minerals, 
 a simultaneous deposition must of course happen ; the quartzy 
 particles must find their fellows, those of feldspar will do the 
 same, and those of mica the same, and the three minerals, born 
 at the same moment, will find repose in the same cradle. In 
 the same manner, their ornamental companions, (not essen- 
 tial to the rock, but often studding it, like gems set in royal 
 robes) the emeralds, the topazes, the garnets, the tourmalines, 
 and the other crystalizcd minerals which sparkle in the bosom 
 of the primitive rocks, declare a common birth. True it is, that 
 creative power could call the rocks into being, without any 
 arranging process in their parts, but no analogy countenances 
 the truth of such a supposition, and neither moral nor physical 
 reasons oblige us to admit so improbable a supposition. 
 
 Who has contemplated the stupendous garnets of Fahlun the 
 equally gigantic quartz and felspar crystals of the Alps the more 
 delicate emeralds of Brazil and Ethiopia the variously colored 
 tourmalines of Chesterfield, and Goshen, Mass., and of Paris in 
 Maine the fluorand calcareous spars, of Derbyshire and Cumber- 
 land the idocrases of Vesuvius, and the rubies and sapphires of 
 Ceylon and other regions of India, the bubbles of air included with 
 water and other fluids in quartz the fibres of amianthus the crys- 
 tals of titanium the filaments of native copper and silver shut up 
 in the same mineral the successive crystalizations of galena 
 sulphate of barytes calcareous spar quartz and fluor spar, often 
 included in the same group the splendid amethystine and oth- 
 er geodes little grottoes lined with polished and beautiful geo- 
 metrical figures who has seen all these things the ornaments 
 of our cabinets, and has doubted that they were as truly the re- 
 sults of crystalization, as any of the products of art. which are 
 formed in our laboratories ? 
 
 Crystalization is indeed not exclusively the attribute of primi- 
 tive regions ; but in such regions it is eminently conspicuous, and 
 
PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 39 
 
 if we find crystals in the productions of every geological age, 
 we are thus furnished with proof, that these agencies continued to 
 operate, although with diminished frequency and energy, through 
 all succeeding periods, and that they have not ceased even in our 
 own times,* for mineral crystals are, every moment, forming 
 around us. 
 
 Still no one finds in the upper secondary rocks much less in 
 the tertiary, the numerous and grand crystals that are common 
 in the primitive, and even to a degree in the transition formations, 
 and no one looks for those grand crystal cavities, fours a cris- 
 taux, as they have been fancifully called,! except in the ancient 
 mountains, and in the veins and beds by which they are intersected. 
 
 No person who has been conversant with the effects of solu- 
 tion, and especially of solution, aided by heat and pressure, can 
 easily confound them with those of mere mechanical deposi- 
 tion. Take a piece of the most beautiful granite its quartz is 
 translucent if not transparent its feldspar is foliated in structure, 
 presenting two regular cleavage planes, united at definite angles 
 its mica is perfectly foliated, and splits into innumerable thin 
 laminae, each of which, is perfectly transparent and has a high 
 lustre, and this last property is common (sometimes in a less de- 
 gree,) to the quartz and the feldspar. Gneiss and mica slate and 
 saccharoidal limestone are distinguished, in a greater or less de- 
 gree by similar characteristics. Now, translucency transparen- 
 cy lustre cleavage, planes and regular structure, are known 
 and established results of chemical deposition, and are never the 
 effect of mechanical aggregation. Compare the above proper- 
 
 * I have obtained crystals of calcareous spar of sulphate of barytes and of sul- 
 phate of lime and some of them repeatedly as accidental results in chemical proces- 
 ses : I have seen even quartz crystals form rapidly under my eye, and others have 
 cited them as slowly produced with regularity and beauty, from the fluoric solution of 
 silex. Crystals of pyroxene specular iron, titanium and other minerals have been 
 produced by volcanic and furnace heat ; more than forty species of minerals have 
 been observed in the slags of furnaces, and white pyroxene has been produced by 
 the action of fire upon the constituents of this mineral, and after fusion, it has re- 
 cvystalized, in the same form. Am. Jowr. Vol. 10. p. 190. 
 
 t Patrin's mineralogical travels. 
 
40 PRIMITIVE ROCKS. 
 
 ties, with those found in a piece of clay or chalk, and no person, 
 however unskilled in physical characteristics, can possibly attrib- 
 ute them to a similar origin. The latter have as obviously sprung 
 from mechanical as the former from chemical laws ; mechani- 
 cal suspension must have preceded the one, and solution, fusion 
 or sublimation the other. 
 
 Crystalization is the most exalted agency of the mineral king- 
 dom and it answers to organization in the animal and vegetable ; 
 but it is entirely unconnected with the principle of life. It re- 
 sults in the production of regular solids often of beautiful figures, 
 bounded almost always, by plane faces and by right lines, which 
 constitute the outline of beauty in the mineral kingdom, as the 
 curve line does in the organized kingdoms. (Haiiy.) 
 
 VIII. Geological research clearly proves, that the earth was 
 gradually redeemed from the universal and long continued do- 
 minion of water under which it lay at its first creation. The ap- 
 pearance of the dry land, necessarily implies previous entire 
 submersion, and taken in connexion with the existence of the uni- 
 versal watery abyss, before described, necessarily implies all that 
 geology requires on this part of the subject. 
 
 The tops, the peaks and ridges of the highest mountains,* be- 
 gan then to appear, as they emerged from the universal primi- 
 tive ocean, and as its waters gradually retired, the land became 
 more and more denuded, and at this period and not before, it be- 
 came possible, that vegetables should begin to exist, because 
 they had now a place and soil on which to grow. 
 
 It is possible (but there is perhaps no positive evidence of the 
 fact,) that some aquatic plants might have been created a little 
 earlier, but the primitive ocean was evidently then too much 
 charged with mineral matter to afford a proper medium, or a 
 proper pabulum, for any considerable extent of animated exist- 
 
 * It is not material here to discuss the origin of mountains whether they were 
 raised from below, or left prominent by the subsidence of the contiguous regions, 
 or were reared by accumulation; it is agreed on all hands that they existed before 
 the subsidence of the early ocean, whose retreat must of course have first exposed 
 their summits. 
 
TRANSITION ROCKS. 41 
 
 ence, either vegetable or animal. As its waters were, gradually, 
 more and more freed from foreign matter, by the progressive de- 
 position of the rocks, it began to be fitted for the simpler forms 
 of animal life, and its qualities might not have been inconsistent 
 with the existence of some species of aquatic plants ; still, we be- 
 lieve that the earliest impressions of vegetables, found in the tran- 
 sition strata, are generally those of land plants, or of those which 
 might grow on shores or in swampy or marshy situations. 
 
 Plants are not numerous in the transition strata ; as far as they 
 were littoral, aquatic or marine, and therefore vegetating in or 
 near the water, they would be found in the deposits of stony mat- 
 ter that were embosomed in it ; as far as they were terrestrial, 
 they might have been swept in by winds, storms, tides, and cur- 
 rents, and would thus become entombed. As to the animals, they, 
 being altogether aquatic and marine, must necessarily live and die 
 in the water, and their remains would be consolidated in the 
 rocks whose deposition was then going on. 
 
 TRANSITION ROCKS. 
 
 IX. The rocks deposited at and immediately after this period, 
 are generally less crystaline and more compact in their structure 
 than the primitive. 
 
 The crystalization, although often conspicuous, is more con- 
 fused ; in the transition limestone, it sometimes appears only in 
 minute plates and spangles, but the translucence is usually pre- 
 served, especially at the edges. 
 
 The number of foreign and imbedded crystals is less consider- 
 able than in the primitive rocks, and we begin to find the first 
 proofs of certain modes of mechanical agency, indicating the 
 commencement and earliest effects of attrition and violence upon 
 the rocks already formed. 
 
 We must not confound these mechanical effects with those al- 
 ready mentioned in relation to the primitive rocks, among which 
 we find so many proofs of sudden and great violence, causing 
 ruptures, dislocations and injections of foreign matter ; the rocks 
 are elevated, contorted and fractured ; veins and dykes are in- 
 
42 TRANSITION ROCKS. 
 
 troduced cutting the strata ; some of the strata are below and 
 some above the common level or plane of the same strata con- 
 tinued, but the rocks are generally in or near their original geo- 
 graphical location, and pebbles, gravel and bowlders are rarely 
 found. 
 
 Still, in our artificial arrangements in geology, we must remem- 
 ber, that near the dividing lines of contiguous departments, there 
 are mixed characters. In rocks, decidedly primitive, we find (espe- 
 cially where.a later formation is about to commence) marks of 
 mechanical agencies, fragments of primitive rocks, and entire and 
 sometimes large masses, imbedded in a basis of primitive rock.* 
 
 X. In these rocks, we find (in general) for the first time, frag- 
 ments both rounded and angular of all the previous rocks ; some- 
 times these fragments are united by crystaline matter, forming 
 the paste or cement, which holds them together ; at other times, 
 the paste is composed of nearly or quite the same materials with 
 4he fragments, but in a state of much finer division, and at other 
 times there is little interposed cement. 
 
 We must not confound the crystaline with the fragmentary or 
 brecciated rocks, although some rocks of the transition class are 
 almost entirely crystaline, and others are made up chiefly of ruins 
 assembled and cemented. 
 
 In the formation of the transition rocks, chemical and mechan- 
 ical action appear to have been sometimes concomitant, and at 
 other times, alternating. 
 
 Among the transition marbles, which are decidedly crystaline, 
 we may mention the limestone of the peak of Derbyshire, and the 
 imbedded animals also, are often crystaline in their structure. 
 Many of the transition limestones may be called at least sub-crys- 
 taline. The marbles of Bennington, Middlebury, arid Swanton 
 in Vermont the latter on Lake Champlain, are translucent at 
 the edges and evince a previous state of chemical solution ; those 
 
 *The country about Northfield and Montague and Gill's falls in Massachusetts, 
 presents remarkable examples of this nature, and they are the more interesting from 
 the fact that we can, in the course of a few miles, trace a progress from rocks deci- 
 dedly primitive, to conglomerate and even to gray wacke and sand stone. 
 
TRANSITION ROCKS. 43 
 
 of Hudson, N. York, are similar and abound with encrinital re- 
 mains. 
 
 But many of the rocks of this class are most palpably frag- 
 mentary, and the fragments are of all sizes, from those that are 
 scarcely visible to the naked eye, to those whose dimensions are 
 measured by inches and even by feet. 
 
 The graywackes of the Chaudiere falls in Lower Canada, of 
 Rhode Island, and of the Cattskill mountains, are striking exam- 
 ples. " r 
 
 The brecciated marble of the Potomac, employed in the pub- 
 lic buildings at Washington, seems to belong to the transition 
 class. It is a remarkably firm rock, composed of ovoidal and an- 
 gular pebbles, which appear to have received their shape from 
 friction in water. The cement is a more minutely divided sub- 
 stance of the same kind, but calcareous matter is not exclusively 
 the material either of the pebbles or of the cement. 
 
 The fragmentary rocks of Rhode Island, extending by Provi- 
 dence to Boston, and which are very conspicuous in Dorchester, 
 Roxbury, Brooklyn, and other neighboring towns, are fine ex- 
 amples of early formations of this kind. They are very inter- 
 esting five miles east of Newport, at a place called Purgatory, 
 where a large mass of the rock, separated by the natural seams 
 which are found in it, running parallel for a great distance and 
 cutting the pebbles in two, has fallen out, having been undermi- 
 ned by the sea, whose waves, when impelled by storms, break and 
 roar, frightfully, in this deep chasm. 
 
 The pebbles are here chiefly quartz they are ovoidal in form 
 and of every size from that of a bird's egg to that of a common 
 keg, and they lie generally with their transverse diameters parallel. 
 
 The pebbles of the fragmentary rocks about Boston are very 
 various in their composition, obviously however the ruins chiefly 
 of primitive rocks. The pebbles, which there lie in the roads and 
 fields, have proceeded from the disintegration of this pudding 
 stone. Although to estimate comprehensively, the extent and 
 variety of fragmentary rocks, we must include in our view the 
 vast deposits of the periods later than the transition ; still 
 we may pause a moment, at the geological period now before 
 
44 TRANSITION ROCKS'. 
 
 us, and enquire whence arose the mighty masses of ruins which, 
 of every shape and variety of composition, compose, not merely 
 accidental fragments, or here or there a stratum or a hill, but which 
 cover myriads of square miles, are sometimes the basis of countries, 
 and rise occasionally even into mountains. The Cattskills are con- 
 spicuous monuments of geological revolutions. Not only at the 
 base but at the summit, thousands of feet above the level of the 
 Hudson river, we find these mountains composed extensively of 
 fragmentary rocks, rounded and angular, and their rude piles in- 
 form us, that the materials of which they are built were once loose 
 and rolling about, in the waves of the early ocean, encountering 
 friction and violence, in their various modes of action. 
 
 If we call to mind the sketch recently presented to us of the 
 effects and proofs of crystalization, as exhibited in the early 
 primitive rocks, the contrast afforded by the fragmentary rocks, 
 must appear very striking, and connected with their relative po- 
 sition, can leave no doubt on the mind, that they arose from a 
 subsequent and totally different state of things. 
 
 What were the causes that broke up portions of the primitive 
 rocks and left their ruins the sport of the waves, destined, in the 
 progress of time, to be cemented again into firm masses ? 
 
 Beyond the wearing effects of powers still in action, those of 
 the weather and the seasons, and of the vicissitudes of tempera- 
 ture, we are at liberty to add the convulsions of earthquake, 
 tempest, flood and fire, by which our planet is still agitated. Be- 
 yond these we are not at liberty to go, because we have no facts 
 to form certain grounds of reasoning ; but the causes that have 
 been named would, in tiie course of ages, perform the work, great 
 as its results may now appear. 
 
 XL The rocks of this class are rarely either quite vertical, or 
 quite horizontal in their position ; their strata are inclined often 
 at high angles from the horizon ; where their strata come in con- 
 tact with the primitive rocks, the former are found upon the latter, 
 and when they touch primitive mountains, they generally slope 
 down their flanks ; always lying above them, but declining grad- 
 ually towards the plain countries, and terminating commonly be- 
 neath them. 
 
TRANSITION ROCKS. 45 
 
 It has been proposed to limit their obliquity between certain 
 degrees, for instance, 10 or 12, and 45. It is probable 
 that these boundaries would, in fact, include most of the trans- 
 ition rocks; but it would be inconvenient to restrict ourselves 
 within these limits, because, we do occasionally find transition 
 rocks that range both below and above these degrees. Indeed, 
 the progress of geological investigation has proved, that there is 
 much less reliance to be placed upon the position of rocks in re- 
 gard to obliquity, than was formerly imagined ; although this dis- 
 tinction is not to be abandoned. Alone, it would perhaps rarely 
 serve as a just ground of conclusion, but in connexion with other 
 characters, it is a valuable auxiliary. As to elevation, transition 
 mountains are not the highest, but they often attain a considera- 
 ble altitude, as in the Cattskills two, three and four thousand 
 feet : and transition rocks sometimes occupy also low levels. 
 
 XII. In these rocks, we find the first traces of organized be- 
 ings ; the perfect impresses of plants, and both the impresses and 
 the entire mineralized bodies of millions of animals ; the deposi- 
 tion of these rocks was therefore cotemporary with, or subse- 
 quent to, the creation and propagation of the organized beings, 
 whose impresses or whose bodies they contain, and it is self ev- 
 ident that these rocks could not have been deposited prior to 
 the date of the animals included in them. 
 
 Both the plants and animals lived and died at or near the pla- 
 ces where they are found entombed in the rocks ; for they pre- 
 sent, in many instances, few or no marks of violence, or of acci- 
 dent ; their most delicate parts are, often, perfectly preserved ; 
 animals, with all their organs entire, and plants with their fibres 
 and leaves in full expansion. 
 
 We must not, however, understand, with too much strictness, 
 that every thing was always quiet in that ancient ocean. There 
 is no reason to doubt that there were tides, as the laws of gravity 
 were doubtless the same as now ; there were probably storms, 
 and tempests, and currents, and as the land came to be gradual- 
 ly uncovered, there would be rivers and torrents ; there were also, 
 we must believe, earthquakes and volcanos ; hence, or from one 
 or more of these causes, the marks of violence which we occa- 
 
 /' 
 
 S> v 
 
 ff Thar TV H 
 
46 TRANSITION ROCKS. 
 
 sionally find, one stratum having its included mineralized organic 
 bodies entire, and a contiguous one having them more or less 
 broken. (Our author, page 24.) 
 
 Both the plants and animals, generally belong to races which 
 are no longer found alive, or if analogous races exist, they are re- 
 lated to the ancient ones, rather by generic than by specific char- 
 acters. The animals are commonly either zoophites (belonging 
 chiefly to the coral family) or shell fish, in many instances desti- 
 tute, or nearly so, of locomotivity ; sometimes, however, they are 
 furnished with organs for motion.* Sometimes they occupy great 
 districts of country, and form almost the entire mass of marble, in 
 the bowels of mountains, miles from day light, and they are so 
 firmly united to the rock, as to form part of its substance. Many 
 of the architectural marbles owe much of their beauty to imbedded 
 animals, myriads of which lie almost in absolute contact, the mat- 
 ter of the rock only filling up the void between them, the void 
 occasioned by their angular and confused positions. 
 
 There is no difficulty in understanding how the marine ani- 
 mals, the encrinites, for example, that fill the transition limestone 
 of the Peak of Derbyshire, came to be thus entombed. We can- 
 not doubt that the animals received their existence, and lived and 
 died in an ocean full of carbonate of lime, in solution or in me- 
 chanical suspension, or both. When they died, they of course 
 subsided to the bottom, and were surrounded, as they lay, by the 
 concreting calcareous matter. Multitudes of them were present 
 at the same time and place, in all the confusion of accidental po- 
 sition, and therefore were enveloped, just as we find them, in every 
 imaginable posture ; the interstices were filled by the calcareous 
 deposit, and this being more or less chemically dissolved, produced 
 a firm sub-crystaline mass, a section of which shews us the animals 
 sawn through, and admitting of a polish like the rest of the rock. 
 
 If we could suppose that our common clams and oysters, that 
 lie in the mud of our harbors and inlets, were to become solidified 
 
 * Madrepores and encrinites could move very little ; the echinus, found in secon- 
 dary rocks, moved on his spine, which served him for a foot, and some of the early 
 shell fish had organs to enable them to rise and fall in the water. (Our author.) 
 
TRANSITION ROCKS. 47 
 
 into one mass, along with the matter which envelops them, the 
 case would not be dissimilar ; only they would be enveloped in 
 earthy, instead of crystaline matter, and the rock formed from it 
 would be referred to the most recent secondary, or to the tertiary. 
 
 It is easily understood, also, how a new stratum, either of the 
 same or of different constitution, may be deposited upon a pre- 
 vious one ; and with it, the bodies of the animals that lived and 
 died in the fluid ; and these might be the same animals with 
 those of a previous stratum, or of a different species or genus, it 
 being understood that each successive stratum was, in its turn, 
 the bottom of the then ocean, and also the upper or last consoli- 
 dated layer of the crust of the earth, as it then was at that place. 
 
 As we have no direct historical evidence to the facts, it is im- 
 possible to say, precisely, what circumstances would determine 
 such an ocean, to deposit, at a particular time, a stratum of lime- 
 stone with madrepores and encrinites, and then one of slate with 
 trilobites and fern leaves, and then one of breccia or sandstone 
 with stems of reeds or palm leaves, or bodies of pectinites and 
 anomise. 
 
 But it is easy to imagine, that if all the causes necessary to pro- 
 duce these events, were in successive operation, the events might 
 succeed each other in the order supposed ; and that they did in 
 fact so succeed each other, cannot be reasonably doubted, any 
 more than that an edifice, having trap rock for its foundation, 
 and sandstone for its basement, and marble for its superstructure, 
 and wood for its roof, and finished with sheet lead, zinc or iron, 
 was actually constructed of these materials, connected by the 
 builder in that order. 
 
 The great truths of geology are few, simple and intelligible ; 
 needing nothing but the application of a sound judgment, en- 
 lightened by science, to the accurate observation of facts. The 
 facts can often be distinctly observed, and the order of their succes- 
 sion ascertained, whether the proximate causes and the immediate 
 circumstances can be discovered or not. We then reason upon 
 them, with the aid of the knowledge which we have acquired, 
 and there can be no doubt that we often reason conclusively and 
 correctlv. 
 
48 TRANSITION ROCKS. 
 
 It is a supposition, altogether inadmissible, and unworthy of a 
 serious answer, that the animal and vegetable races, entombed 
 in such profusion, and buried often under entire mountain ranges, 
 or firmly cemented into their very bosom, were created as we find 
 them. On the contrary, there can be no doubt whatever, that they 
 were once living beings, performing the part belonging to their 
 respective races,* and that at their death, or soon after, they were 
 consolidated, in the then concreting and forming rocky strata. 
 
 XIII. The transition rocks are supposed to have been deposit- 
 ed, while the earth was passing from the state of a watery abyss 
 to a habitable condition, and therefore they received the name 
 which they bear. 
 
 The leading rocks of this class are, most of the variegated, 
 fragmentary, and petrifaction marbles, many pudding stones, 
 breccias and sand stones, all the grayvvackes and many slates, 
 especially those connected with the anthracite coal ; such as that 
 of Lehigh, that of Wilkesbarre, and that of Rhode Island, besides 
 other strata. 
 
 Some geologists, instead of a transition class, prefer referring 
 these rocks principally to those which we shall next describe, on- 
 ly considering a part of them as the older rocks of that class, 
 and another part as newer members of the preceding. 
 
 It is less important which method is pursued, than that the 
 characteristic distinctions of the rocks should be clearly pointed 
 out. 
 
 The word transition is also partly descriptive of the characters 
 as well as of the supposed age of these rocks : their characters 
 are generally midway (in transitu) between those of the primitive 
 and of the secondary rocks, and we slide down by a pleasing and 
 instructive progression from the one to the other. 
 
 *The trilobite, one of the early fossilized and imbedded animals, could bend his 
 body double, like a lobster, having in his back, the same jointed articulation ; we 
 find him sometimes doubled, and sometimes expanded, as he lies in the rocks, and 
 fiis eyes are often standing prominently out. Grand trilobites, of singular size and 
 perfection, were shown me by the late Mr. John Sherman, at Trenton Falls, near 
 Utica, (New York) where they were obtained. They seemed almost looking out of 
 the black limestone rock, as if still animated. 
 
TRANSITION ROCKS. 49 
 
 I am therefore inclined to retain the word and the class tran- 
 sition, although without confining it to the precise limits designa- 
 ted by Werner, who introduced this division. 
 
 It is seen at once, what inconvenience is experienced, when 
 we attempt to dispense with the transition class of rocks. We 
 either produce confusion in the primitive, by attaching to it the 
 unnatural appendage of early fragmentary rocks, or we swell the 
 secondary, already sufficiently full. 
 
 There is also this additional embarrassment in giving up the 
 transition class. Either we throw into the primitive class, rocks 
 containing organized remains, which creates a very unfortunate 
 blending of formations extremely dissimilar, or we extend the 
 secondary class still more, and group together organized remains 
 of almost all ages, of "all indeed, except of the tertiary and allu- 
 vial.* 
 
 Regarding therefore, for the present, Werner's theoretical 
 ideas as to the transit of the earth from a chaotic to a habitable 
 state, in no other light, than as the ground of a classification, we 
 find that it is impossible, without great iuconvenience, to neglect 
 those peculiar characters and circumstances which denote an ac- 
 tual transition in the nature and position of the rocks, and which 
 therefore sustain the propriety of this or of some analogous divis- 
 ion. 
 
 XIV. Not only the tops and ridges but the flanks of the high- 
 est Alpine chains were now, as we may presume, uncovered, and 
 with them a portion of the highly elevated land was brought into 
 view ; the valleys, basins, defiles and plains, with the moderately 
 elevated regions, were probably still covered by the remains of 
 the original ocean, and the waters appear to have been freed from 
 a considerable portion of their chemically dissolved mineral con- 
 tents ; it would seem however that they still retained matter in 
 
 * The ingenious division of Messrs Conybeare and Philips, is not chargeable with 
 these inconveniences, and is in many respects very good ; but hitherto it is little 
 known out of England, and perhaps it has a happier application in that country, 
 where the coal strata hold so conspicuous a rank, than in most other countries, 
 
 7 
 
50 TRANSITION ROCKS. 
 
 chemical solution, and much that was in loose fragments or me- 
 chanically suspended ; the latter state of things necessarily must 
 have occurred, because there was now an extensive surface ex- 
 posed to mechanical agencies. It would however appear that 
 the waters had become much more fitted to support life, and 
 the life of animals of more complex structure, and which de- 
 mand a purer medium and a pabulum less mineral. Every thing 
 seems now to have been prepared for the next grand epoch. 
 
 The creation of the vegetable and animal races appears to 
 have gone on progressively with the deposition of the mineral 
 strata and masses. It is impossible to form any other inference, 
 if we examine the contents of the terrene crust. The only point 
 that admits of discussion is, as to the amount of time employed. 
 We shall be in the best situation to judge of this after having 
 surveyed the entire subject, including the phenomena of the 
 deluge, which, being the last grand catastrophe, that has hap- 
 pened upon the planet, has left, as might be supposed, its vesti- 
 gia every where. These appearances and their causes must form 
 a distinct subject of consideration, and no one can reason, cor- 
 rectly and conclusively, upon geology, who does not separate the 
 events connected with the great catastrophe which destroyed 
 nearly the whole human family, and most of the animals, from 
 those events which belong to the earlier periods of the planet and 
 preceded the creation of man. 
 
 The geological evidence that supports the history of the flood 
 is most abundant and altogether satisfactory ; but it is peculiar, 
 and appropriate, and is very much confused and weakened, by 
 being blended with the facts belonging to the primitive watery 
 abyss, most of which have no connexion with or resemblance to 
 the events, belonging to this period. 
 
 Before geology had become a science, it was very natural and 
 perhaps unavoidable, that these effects should be, to a degree, 
 confounded, but the discrimination which divides them and as- 
 signs to each the results that belong to it, is, in most cases, 
 no longer difficult, and it is very unhappy, in every view, that mis- 
 takes should be committed on this subject. 
 
SECONDARY ROCKS. 51 
 
 SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 XV. From this period there is a progression in the posi- 
 tion, constitution and contents of the rocks, which, although it 
 sometimes presents only shades of difference, in contiguous mem- 
 bers, is widely diverse in the extremes, and occasionally in depo- 
 sits of nearly the same age. 
 
 In our artificial divisions of natural subjects, we are liable to 
 do violence near the dividing lines. This is particularly true in 
 geology. If we can hardly separate the later members of the 
 primitive from the earlier members of the transition class of 
 rocks, it is perhaps still more difficult to distinguish accurately 
 between the borderers of the transition and the secondary. 
 
 Still, for the sake of perspicuity and for the assistance of the 
 memory, it is necessary to fix the limits between the two. 
 
 But the truth is, that there is a gradual and instructive pro- 
 gression from the earliest primitive down through the transition, 
 secondary and tertiary, to the diluvial and alluvial, including the 
 undoubted but anomalous productions of fire, the lavas ; and the 
 trap rocks and some of the porphyries, which, in the opinion of 
 most geologists, had the same origin. 
 
 After the geological student has surveyed the whole, he will 
 be little embarrassed by the artificial divisions which have aided 
 him in his research. Having reached the top of the building, he 
 will regard the stages and ladders by which he ascended, not as 
 essential parts of the edifice, but merely as the means of his ele- 
 vation. 
 
 XVI. The position of the secondary rocks is generally horizon- 
 tal or nearly so, varying commonly, but a few degrees from that po- 
 sition. Sometimes however, they are found inclined at high angles, 
 and even, as is asserted, in a few rare cases, in a vertical position. 
 
 The truth seems to be here also as with the primitive and 
 transition, that position in regard to obliquity, is not a decisive 
 indication of the character of a rock ; still the positions of the- 
 rocks are generally those that have been described. 
 
52 SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 These rocks, where they are found in connexion with the 
 classes before described, generally occupy the lower declivities of 
 the mountains, reposing upon the transition rocks, or if these are 
 wanting, upon the primitive, and they often slope gradually away 
 into the plains of which (if they are present at all,) they form the 
 upper surface ; these rocks are not always found on the plains, 
 whose immediate surface is sometimes formed by rocks of the 
 transition or primitive class. But when the three are present at 
 once (which frequently happens) those rocks now under consid- 
 eration are on the top, the transition are next below and the 
 primitive at the bottom. It is believed that in every country, by 
 perforating to a certain depth, we should always arrive at primi- 
 tive rocks, but in particular situations, those of either class may 
 be occasionally found on the surface ; the newer rocks when ab- 
 sent, either never having been deposited in that place, or having 
 been removed by gradual or by violent operations. 
 
 The primitive rocks, form, by far, the greater part of the crust 
 of the globe ; they constitute the firm basis of every country. 
 Whether they appear at the surface or not, depends upon the 
 presence or absence of the other classes of rocks. 
 
 Either of those classes may at particular places, cover the sur- 
 face, and should the secondary alone appear, it may be impossi- 
 ble to know whether the rocks, intermediate in character be- 
 tween the secondary and the primitive, (the transition) exist be- 
 low ; but, in general, we may be sure of this fact, that a newer 
 rock will not be found below an older one. 
 
 It may happen, as in Saxony, and many other countries, that 
 the several classes of rocks may be exhibited in regular succes- 
 sion, the older rocks breaking through the newer and exposing 
 portions of their masses uncovered. 
 
 It may, even happen, that the peaks and ridges may be primi- 
 tive, the higher slopes and flanks transition, the lower secondary 
 or tertiary, and the plains and hollows diluvial or alluvial, with 
 perhaps an interlude of trap, or porphyry, or trachytic rocks, in- 
 truding among the rest, or crowning some of them ; but this reg- 
 ularity of order is rarely found in full detail. 
 
SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 XVII. The rocks of this class are called secondary, in t elation 
 to the supposed period of their deposition. They occupy some 
 entire countries, covering the primitive and transition classes. 
 They are not always confined to plains and basins, but frequent- 
 ly rise into hills ; sometimes even into mountains of moderate 
 elevation, and frequently, they form what is called a rolling sur- 
 face. 
 
 Secondary countries constitute a very considerable part of the 
 earth's upper surface. A vast tract, mainly secondary some of 
 it perhaps mounting to the transition extends from the we&ftern 
 slopes of the Alleghany mountains to the Rocky mountains, form- 
 ing one of the largest surfaces of derivative rocks in the world. 
 
 On the contrary, extensive ranges of the Alleghany mountains, 
 running parallel with others of the secondary and transition class, 
 are primitive, and primitive rocks occupy the surface of a very 
 large part of the eastern or New England states. 
 
 Consequently, as in other regions, the scenery, the building 
 materials, the soil, the agricultural processes and productions, 
 and the very manners and modes of life of the inhabitants, 
 vary with the physical features of the country. This is true atyo 
 of the water courses and water power, the qualities of the water, 
 and to some extent, of the very aspect of the sky. 
 
 XVIII. Their constitution is progressively, less and less cheui- 
 ical, and more and more mechanical, in some degree, according <ip 
 their age ; the older members of the series contain considerable- 
 traces of crystalization, but the newer are often quite earthy, anci 
 composed of finely divided parts, aggregated with little or no crys 
 taline matter between the portions. The transparency, lustre and! 
 pure bright colors ; the numerous aggregated and imbedded crys- 
 tals, and the delicate structure of parts so conspicuous in the older 
 rocks, are almost entirely wanting, in the most recent secondary. 
 When crystals are found, they have generally resulted from the in-; 
 filtration of fluids, subsequently to the formation of the rocks, and 
 therefore the crystals occupy veins and cavities, and the mass of 
 the rock is commonly destitute of them. 
 
54 SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 The agency of subterranean fire may have produced many 
 crystalizations, especially in the ignigenous rocks, and we are not 
 to suppose that all crystals have originated from aqueous solu- 
 tion. It has been proved, as well by the crystals produced by 
 fire, in the case of volcanic eruptions, as by those which are oc- 
 casionally found in the furnaces of the arts, and in heated and ig- 
 nited vessels in our laboratories, that heat can form these beauti- 
 ful solids ; but, in general, there appears no reason to suppose 
 that secondary rocks have been exposed to heat ; and we look in 
 vain for the splendid imbedded crystals, as well as for the general 
 crystaline structure, by which the earlier primitive rocks are dis- 
 tinguished, 
 
 Who expects to see in the sandstones and shales, and in the 
 compact limestones, that display of crystals, which is so com- 
 mon in the primitive ? 
 
 We must not, however, attempt to limit natural operations too 
 strictly. Every thing is not chemical that is early, nor every 
 thing mechanical that is late. In the progressive development 
 of the present order of things, there appear to have been altera- 
 tions, and successions of periods characterized by chemical and 
 mechanical deposits. The fragmentary rocks begin very early, 
 immediately after the primitive, and even, perhaps, with the 
 latest of that class, and they continue through all the forma- 
 tions, down to the alluvial and diluvial. Their deposits are, 
 however, often interrupted by chemical formations, and there- 
 fore we still find chemical deposits, even among the secon- 
 dary, and mechanical among the transition. This, however, 
 does not seriously invalidate the truth of the general statement, 
 that the higher we mount in the ages of rocks, the more chemi- 
 cal they are in their composition, and the lower we descend in 
 lime, the more mechanical. 
 
 It is generally true, that the lower the position of a rock, the 
 deeper it lies in the earth, the more chemical is its constitution, 
 and the more superficial, (provided the several classes of rocks 
 be present at the same place) the more mechanical it will be 
 found. These truths, originally developed by Werner, have 
 
SECONDARY ROCKS. 55 
 
 been, in part, questioned or denied by Dr. MacCulloch, upon 
 the evidence of the strata, contained in a very limited, although 
 a very interesting district, the West of Scotland ; but the struc- 
 ture of the United States, and generally of North America, great- 
 ly confirms the original view of the geologist of Friburg. 
 
 There are splendid crystalizations in the transition and earlier 
 secondary limestone, as in Derbyshire, and at Lockport and Ni- 
 agara, in the State of New York. In the two latter places, al- 
 though the rocks are usually called secondary, and lie very flat, 
 there is a strong approximation to the transition character. 
 
 XIX. The secondary rocks are often composed of palpable 
 fragments, being the ruins of the preceding rocks. 
 
 Many breccias and pudding stones, and a vast variety of sand- 
 stones, are of this description ; and whether they are older or 
 newer deposits of this kind, that is, whether they are referrible to 
 the transition or secondary rocks, must be decided by their ap- 
 pearance, relative position, contents, &c. The most recent sec- 
 ondary deposits are scarcely to be distinguished, except by their 
 stronger aggregation, from clays, soil and sand, and other merely 
 earthy masses, of the tertiary or alluvial. 
 
 Indeed, the tertiary class, introduced within a few years, com- 
 pletes the connexion between the secondary and the most recent 
 deposits.* 
 
 XX. The secondary rocks, as a class, abound with organized 
 bodies, and with their relics and impresses. 
 
 It is not true, that every secondary rock contains such remains, 
 nor that the same rock is always characterized either by their 
 presence or absence ; but, secondary rocks often contain or- 
 ganized remains, in astonishing quantities. 
 
 * Some persons have urged that the term primary should be applied to the primi- 
 tive rocks, secondary to the transition, and tertiary to the secondary. This would no 
 doubt be, numerically, more correct, but it would not now be judicious to disturb 
 the received acceptation of words, which really convey no false idea, and we should 
 lose the advantage of the word transition, which is very significant, and in the sense 
 which has been explained, its use is very just. Besides, a frequent change of terms 
 is a great evil, and it is one of the vices of the science of this age. 
 
56 SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 The older rocks of this class, generally abound in shells of mol- 
 luscous animals, principally of extinct genera, and there is a pro- 
 gression through the more recent strata, exhibiting a greater and 
 greater approximation towards the more complicated structure of 
 the most perfect animals ; and the newer rocks of this class, and 
 of the strata that lie upon them, including the tertiary, contain 
 reptiles, fish, and even birds, and some terrestrial quadrupeds. 
 Within a few years, however, the skeletons of some very large 
 oviparous animals of the crocodile family, namely, the ichthyo- 
 saurus or fish lizard, the megalosaurus or great lizard, and the pie- 
 siosaurus, have been found in the lias limestone of England. 
 
 The secondary rocks abound with the impressions of plants, 
 and tlhere is, with respect both to them and the animals, a grad- 
 ual progress from those which are unknown, or little known at 
 the present day, up to those that are similar to, or identical with, 
 the existing races. Many distinguished geologists entertain the 
 opiriion, which is sustained by numerous observations, although, 
 perhaps, not absolutely confirmed in its fullest extent, that the 
 same rocks, either of the transition or secondary kind, contain, 
 when they have any such relics, organized remains of the same 
 species or genera of plants and animals, so that a given rock, 
 in the most remote countries, exhibits, as is supposed, substan- 
 tially the same relics, and therefore it is inferred that the depo- 
 sition of these rocks probably arose from the same causes, and 
 was attended by similar circumstances. If this position is not 
 fully established, so considerable an approximation has been made 
 towards confirming it, that the fossil organic bodies contained in 
 rocks, are now considered as good indicia of the geological age^. 
 and character of the strata in which they occur. 
 
 lit is to be observed, that, excepting in the coal formations, the 
 rqmains of plants are much less numerous in the rocks, than 
 those of animals ; and among animals until we arrive in the most 
 superficial, and the most imperfectly consolidated rocks the 
 greater part, both in the transition and secondary formations, 
 are marine or aquatic. 
 
 It is easy to understand why plants are less frequent than ani- 
 mals. Until the latest periods of the redemption of the earth 
 
SECONDARY ROCKS. 57 
 
 from the dominion of water, there must have been a much less 
 perfect accommodation of things to vegetable, than to animal 
 life, and therefore it might be expected that the impresses of 
 plants should be more rare than those of animals. 
 
 They are few in the transition rocks, and, in that class, they 
 are most frequent in the strata connected with the anthracite 
 coat. 
 
 Among the secondary rocks also, they are most abundant in 
 the bituminous coal formation", and they increase in quantity and 
 variety, as we approach the tertiary, in which, and the most re- 
 cent secondary, they are numerous ; and we end by finding in- 
 humed wood in the form of lignite, or bituminized wood, or wood 
 slightly mineralized ; and eventually we find wood unchanged ; 
 and thus we trace the vegetable families, from their commence- 
 ment on the borders of the primitive, quite down to our own 
 times. 
 
 The remarks that were made on the fossil animal remains of 
 the transition class, are, in a great measure, applicable here. As 
 the earlier animal races were evidently produced, lived, and died, 
 in the water, and as even many of the more recent were amphib- 
 ious, we cannot be surprised that their remains should have been 
 deposited in the bottom of the then existing ocean, vyhere they 
 appear to have been consolidated, along with the matter of the 
 rocks, which was in the course of deposition around them. Their 
 deposition was evidently progressive ; and successive genera- 
 tions, either of the same, or of different species and genera, were, 
 in their turn, entombed and mineralized, and thus prepared for 
 exhibition to the men of remote ages, who should chance to look 
 into the natural mausoleums containing them. 
 
 The testaceous animals, being already protected by a natural 
 calcareous covering, needed to be changed only in the interior 
 or living part. Sometimes this is petrified with the same mineral 
 matter as the shell ; at other times, the shell is calcareous, and 
 the animal is silicified ; this is the fact, particularly with many 
 of the chalk fossils; the echinus and the alcyonia are often masses 
 
 8 
 
58 SECONDARY ROCKS. 
 
 of flint, still, however, retaining the organized form, while every 
 thing around them is calcareous. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to doubt, that the process of animal and 
 mineral deposition, which has been thus concisely described, was 
 that which really happened. Whatever may have been the op- 
 erations of fire, at preceding or subsequent periods, it is impossi- 
 ble that it should have been concerned in the first deposition of 
 the mineral strata, containing organized remains. Indeed, no 
 geologist, however inclined-tQ attribute as many things as possi- 
 ble, to igneous agency, has supposed that animal or vegetable 
 life could ever be produced or sustained in the midst of fire ; and 
 indeed, it is quite incredible, that strata, containing distinct or- 
 ganized remains, were ever melted ; nor is it easy to imagine that 
 they could be even softened, in any great degree, without de- 
 stroying or materially deranging the organized texture.* 
 
 XXI. It appears evident that the mineralized plants and ani- 
 mals of the solid strata have not been collected in these situations, 
 by any sudden and local, or even general catastrophe, for as an 
 author remarks, " among the immense number of fossil shells, 
 many are remarkable for their extreme thinness, delicacy and 
 minuteness of parts, none of which have been injured, but on the 
 contrary are most perfectly preserved." Among the plants of 
 the coal formation situated sometimes hundreds and thousands 
 of feet below the surface, and covered by many beds of solid 
 rocks, their leaves, many of which are of the most tender and 
 delicate structure, are found fully expanded, and in their natural 
 position, in regard to the rest of the plant and laid out, as it 
 were, with as much care as in the hortus siccus of a botanist. 
 The minutest parts do not appear to have suffered attrition or 
 injury of any kind.t 
 
 * Organized remains, or more strictly, petrifactions, have been beautifully named, 
 the medals of the creation. Laid by, in ancient and progressive time, in the bosom 
 of the deep, in which the rocks, containing them, were formed, they furnish a per- 
 petual incentive and reward to investigation. 
 
 t To the truth of this remark, there are of course exceptions; there are disorder- 
 ed strata and aggregates, upon which are impressed marks of violence, exerted, ci- 
 
SECONDARY ROCKS. 59 
 
 It is evident therefore, that notwithstanding partial and local 
 exceptions, the general state of things, at the time of these de- 
 positions, was favorable to the quietness of animal and vegetable 
 life, and to the preservation of the remains of both kingdoms. 
 
 XXII. Without excluding the possibility of transportation in 
 particular cases, there can be little doubt, that in general these 
 plants and animals lived and died at or near the places where their 
 remains are found, and that at least those which are mineralized 
 and entombed in the rocks, have no connexion with the deluge. 
 " Compare the calm deposit of shells and the appearance of the 
 still calmer death of the antediluvian vegetable world with the 
 bowlder stones, the gravel and the disjointed, dispersed and frac- 
 tured osteology of the diluvial deposits, and it will be allowed 
 that there is not the slightest analogy between these classes of 
 events." (Sir A. Creighton in Annals of Philos. Feb. 1825.) 
 We repeat, that it is a great error to attribute the remains and 
 bodies of plants and animals, found usually in a mineralized con- 
 dition in the mountains, and rock masses, often occupying exten- 
 sive districts and sometimes whole countries, and unfathomable 
 depths, to the punitive deluge. In past times, this error was quite 
 universal, and it is not surprising that it was so, when we recol- 
 lect that geology, as a regular and rational study, does not claim 
 a date beyond the middle of the last century, and its more accu- 
 rate researches and reasoning may be considered as almost ex- 
 clusively the offspring of the present century. 
 
 One of the most important results obtained by modern geolo- 
 gy is, that it has clearly distinguished between the circumstances, 
 object and effects of the primitive abyss and of the diluvial ocean ; 
 and no two allied subjects in geology are capable of clearer and 
 more satisfactory discrimination. It is true that the youth of ge- 
 ological science should make us cautious, but on this point our 
 march cannot be backward ; research can never weaken the 
 
 ther at the time of, or subsequent to their formation. The general statement above 
 is not meant to exclude local, occasional, or even general catastrophes, which are 
 not inconsistent with long intermediate periods of prevailing quiet. 
 
60 TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 
 
 proofs already obtained, but will undoubtedly add constantly to 
 their number and value. 
 
 TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 
 
 XXIII. The loose superficial masses of clay, sand, gravel, 
 loam, pebbles and some of the superficial rocks appear to have 
 been the last in the series of regular depositions ;* they are now 
 included under the Tertiary and Diluvial and Alluvial, properly 
 so called. 
 
 The tertiary comprehends the most recent members of what 
 was until within a few years, included under the secondary, and 
 also the oldest members of the former alluvial. 
 
 The diluvial embraces what is conceived to belong to the del- 
 uge,! and the alluvial is now restricted to the deposits, chiefly 
 mechanical, arising from agencies still in operation, and which 
 have been always active, such as the weather, floods^ rain, frost, 
 electricity, &c. &c. 
 
 This threefold division has become necessary in consequence 
 of the progress of discovery. The tertiary division sustains very 
 nearly the same relation to the secondary, on the one hand, and 
 the diluvial and alluvial on the other, as the transition does to 
 the primitive and secondary. In either case, we may separate 
 the subjects of the division referred to, and distribute the mem- 
 bers between the two contiguous classes, but in both cases, a de- 
 gree of confusion will be the result. 
 
 In colloquial language, it is not very important to distinguish 
 between diluvial and alluvial. It may be sufficient, for the pur- 
 poses of conversation, to speak of loose masses generally as allu- 
 vial ; but in accurate geological discussions, it is important to dis- 
 tinguish between the effects of causes now in operation and of 
 those which belong to catastrophes, of which the occurrence of the 
 
 * Always excepting of course, the volcanic and ignigenous formations, which are 
 irregular and obey no settled law of succession. 
 
 t Or deluges, for there may have been repeated physical events of this kind, more 
 or less extensive, although there has been only one general vindictive one and only 
 one general deluge since the creation of man. 
 
TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. ftl 
 
 last is evinced, by the entire appearance of the surface of the 
 earth, by the record of sacred history and the traditions, mythol- 
 ogy, fables and poems of most heathen nations, ancient and mod- 
 ern, savage and civilized.* 
 
 It has been usual to speak of the great sandy, gravelly and 
 clayey district of the southern American states, extending from 
 the ocean to the high country, as alluvial ; but in fact, a large 
 part of it is tertiary and diluvial, and only a small part is strictly 
 alluvial. 
 
 It is true, that in a scientific view, the production or prepara- 
 tion and transportation of the materials of the alluvial and dilu- 
 vial, is due to the same general class of causes, but the scale of 
 operations is widely different, and the diluvial are attributable to 
 catastrophes, sudden, short, violent and occasional the alluvial 
 to causes comparatively or generally feeble, although sometimes 
 violent, and always in operation. 
 
 XXIV. In these looser superficial deposits, we find most of the 
 remains of the larger and more perfect animals, and it is rare 
 that trees} and their larger members arc found in deposits of a 
 more ancient date. This epoch embraces the period of the very 
 termination of the redemption of the earth from the first watery 
 abyss. 
 
 It appears necessary here to remark that the last operations of 
 the primitive ocean were, in all probability, similar to those of our 
 present oceans. Indeed, had not the deluge supervened and in- 
 troduced, along with these, a new set of effects, it might not per- 
 haps have been possible to distinguish between the last operations 
 of the first ocean and the daily effects of the present ; or rather, the 
 latter would, as far as we can understand, have been little else 
 than a continuation of the former. Indeed, a certain part of the 
 
 * See an abstract of these facts in the Edingurgh Encyclopedia, article Deluge. 
 
 t Trees and their branches and roots are sometimes found in the coal formations 
 in the sand stones, in the lias limestone, &c. which proves that the gigantic veg- 
 etables were sometimes embraced in the depositions that were formed in the la- 
 ter periods of the subsidence of the primitive ocean, as well as at epochs still more 
 recent, some of which come down to our own time. 
 
62 TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 
 
 effects of the primitive ocean is liable to be confounded both 
 with those of the present and of the diluvial ocean. 
 
 The discrimination is however not important, and these re- 
 marks are introduced merely to qualify the statements already 
 made, respecting the general dissimilarity between the phenom- 
 ena of these different periods. 
 
 The similar effects to which allusion is now made, are the gen- 
 eral production of debris and wreck, but chiefly of rounded, wa- 
 ter worn stones and bowlders. 
 
 There can be no doubt that these are now produced, or their 
 forms modified by the moving waters of the surface of our planet. 
 
 No one who, on the sea shore, has observed the incessant lash- 
 ing of the waves, and has listened to the hollow hum of the stones 
 and pebbles rubbing against each other, with ceaseless friction, 
 can doubt, that rounded, water worn pebbles are now every mo- 
 ment forming ; and were they found no where else, except on the 
 shores, and in moving waters, there would be no difficulty in as- 
 signing their origin generally to this cause. But rounded stones, 
 water worn pebbles and bowlders are found, in every country, on 
 the surface, and in the soil, and in regions the most remote from 
 the ocean. This of course proves the universal prevalence of 
 the waters. 
 
 Why not attribute the formation of the inland water worn 
 stones to the diluvial ocean ? The answer which must be re- 
 turned is, that the time is too short for the process of grinding 
 down, which would occupy a very long period. The deluge 
 could, and evidently did transport and deposit immense masses of 
 these ruins, where we now find them; but it was not possible that 
 it could, in so limited a period, have effected much, in grinding 
 down the angular fragments of quartz and of other hard stones, in- 
 to ovoidal and globular pebbles, and bowlders. That effect ap- 
 pears to have been, principally, the work of the primitive ocean, 
 which was not limited to a short time. 
 
 XXV. Bones, single or connected, and even entire skeletons 
 of the larger animals, (as the mammoth or mastodon, and other 
 varieties of elephants, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the tapir. 
 
TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 63 
 
 elks,* deer, bears, horses, oxen, whales, fyc.) are found abundant- 
 ly in many countries, buried in the upper and looser strata. 
 
 Trees and their members, and even entire forests are found in 
 similar situations. 
 
 In general, the bones and trees are not mineralized, but are 
 rather, for the most part, in the condition of grave bones or an- 
 cient wood. 
 
 The bones could not be found in the older strata, if the 
 animals were not in existence when those strata were depos- 
 ited. Much less could we expect to find human bones in 
 these strata, for man, evidently, was not created till the earth 
 was reduced to complete order, and many generations of ani- 
 mals and plants, had lived and died ; depositing their remains 
 in the rocks, whose formation was contemporaneous with the 
 existence of the animals or plants, or immediately subsequent to 
 it, or whose materials were accumulated, by catastrophes that 
 also overwhelmed the organized beings. 
 
 Few or no gigantic animals, of any description, are found in the 
 solid strata, below the liast limestone. In that rock, and also in 
 other strata, above and perhaps below, there have been found, 
 within a few years, in England and elsewhere, gigantic oviparous 
 animals of the saurian or lizard family: their remains indicate ani- 
 mals of twenty, forty, fifty, and seventy feet or more in length. | 
 They were amphibious, and there is every reason to believe, that 
 when only the mountains and higher hills of England, were re- 
 deemed from water, and stood out as islands, these enormous 
 animals, closely allied to the crocodile and alligator, that is to 
 say, being of the same genus, but of different species, swam and 
 sported about, in the inter-insular waters of primitive Britain. 
 
 * The cervus megaceros (Irish elk,) is probably extinct, and perhaps some oth- 
 er cotemporary species. 
 
 t A local name, used in England. The hydraulic lime of New York, is a lias. 
 
 t In the interesting collection of G. W. Featherstonhaugh, Esq. in New York, 
 there is a fine head of one of these ancient animals, and a very instructive series of 
 specimens, illustrating the history of the bones found in the caverns, and in the dilu- 
 vial formations of England. 
 
 9 
 
64 TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 
 
 Probably no land quadrupeds are found in any formation ear- 
 lier than the tertiary.* 
 
 This is easily understood. Until this period, there was not dry 
 land enough for terrestrial quadrupeds. It was evidently a period 
 more advanced, than that which produced the ancient croco- 
 diles ; more land was uncovered, but a multitude of natural ba- 
 sins were still full of water, forming lakes, and as the strata which 
 they now present, were in the course of being deposited, various 
 quadrupeds, fortuitously conveyed into the water, or perhaps 
 drowned by accident or by partial inundations, became solidified, 
 and their remains are now found in the basins of Paris and Lon- 
 don, and of the Isle of Wight. In general, their bones are not 
 mineralized, or but partially so, and rarely are they perfectly 
 changed. They are also much less frequent, than the marine 
 animal remains of the earlier strata, probably, both because the 
 animals were much less numerous, and because the circumstan- 
 ces attending their existence and death, were far less favorable 
 to their inhumation. 
 
 It is worthy of remark also, that in the very strata in which 
 they are contained, the relics of water-born animals are very nu- 
 merous. It is believed, by Cuvier and Brongniart, whose elabo- 
 rate investigation of the Paris strata, has been several years be- 
 fore the world, that there were successive periods, in which the 
 waters produced, alternately and successively, marine and fresh- 
 water shells, but perhaps our acquaintance with these ancient 
 animals, does not enable us to decide positively on this point. 
 
 The most remarkable of the solid strata of the tertiary, are 
 the calcairc grassier of the French, millstone, sandstones and 
 gypsum ; and among the materials that are not solidified, numer- 
 ous beds of clay, marie and sand. 
 
 The tertiary formations having been distinguished only within 
 a few years, have, as yet, been only partially examined, and al- 
 most exclusively, in France and England. There can be no 
 
 * See a remarkable fact American Journal of Science, Vol. II. p. 146. 
 
TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 65 
 
 doubt, as already observed, that much of the great alluvial, as it 
 has been called, of the United States, is really tertiary.* The 
 tertiary passes into the diluvial and alluvial, by almost impercept- 
 ible shades, and as it is not easy, perhaps it is not important, to 
 draw the line of separation with perfect accuracy. 
 
 It has been generally admitted, that no viviparous quadrupeds, 
 nor any vertebrated animals,! except amphibious ones, are found 
 lower down than the chalk. Professor Buckland, has, however, 
 discovered in the Stonesfield slate, near Oxford, the bones of 
 birdsj and of a species of opossum. Few large terrestrial quad- 
 rupeds are found in the strata beneath the diluvial and alluvial. 
 
 Of course these could not exist, in any great numbers, until 
 the land was chiefly uncovered, and their inhumation is, we pre- 
 sume, to be ascribed, with few exceptions, to the deluge of Noah. 
 
 XXVI. Many revolutions more or less extensive, the result of 
 earthquakes, volcanos, tempests and even deluges, partial or gene- 
 ral, and perhaps of other causes, now unknown, may have preceded 
 the formation of man. Of these revolutions, there is abundant 
 evidence in the strata, which as already stated, are often contor- 
 ted, elevated, depressed, dislocated and blended, and the same 
 relics are asserted to be found in the strata of the same kind re- 
 peated at different depths, and separated by other intervening 
 beds of rocks, containing also in many instances, their own pecu- 
 liar remains. These facts if established by sufficient evidence, 
 prove the existence of successive generations of these beings and 
 their submersion and inhumation by the alternate and successive 
 prevalence of the waters. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that the creation of animals 
 and plants was successive ; not by equivocal generation not by 
 atomic action, but by the fiat of the Almighty. 
 
 * See two excellent papers on this subject, by Prof. Vanuxem and Dr. Morton, in 
 the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. VI. 
 
 t For a notice of a vertebrated animal five feet long, found in old red sandstone, 
 see American Journal, Vol. II. p. 146 and Vol. III. p. 247. 
 
 t Birds are supposed to have been found in the English lias. 
 
66 TERTIARY, DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 
 
 The waters, at different periods, appear to have been adapted 
 to the support of different races, and therefore, their remains 
 were successively solidified. When this happened, it is not ne- 
 cessary to suppose that the animals of a particular race were all 
 extinguished ; a multitude of them were entombed, as is proved 
 by their remains ; but individuals probably survived, in sufficient 
 numbers to continue the respective species; in the mean time, 
 other animals were created, and new races were petrified in the 
 forming rocks: again perhaps the diminished race prevailed anew, 
 and becoming again the tenants of the waters, presented their 
 relics to be solidified in a new deposition, and so on in succession. 
 
 As to plants, it has been already remarked that their relics (the 
 coal formations excepted,) are far less numerous than those of 
 animals. It is in no way surprising that their creation should 
 have been successive, and associated with different rock form- 
 ations, and if the same plants occur in successive repetitions 
 of the same or of different formations, their seeds or roots 
 might have been preserved in the waters or transported from 
 other places. 
 
 It is in no way inconsistent with natural laws, that the particu- 
 lar state of things which attended a particular rocky deposition, 
 should have been such also, when the same kind of rock came to 
 be deposited again, as to favor the production of the same ani- 
 mal or vegetable races from the germs, seeds, roots or individuals 
 that had been preserved. The temperature of the great waters 
 under the same circumstances, is liable to little variation, which 
 would greatly favor a similarity or identity of productions. 
 
 In the same latitudes there is now, on the earth, a great regular- 
 ity in the vegetable species, and, in a less rigorous degree, in the 
 animal races. 
 
 But the geologist is not obliged to remove or to solve every 
 difficulty, however gratifying it may be to effect this object. His 
 first duty is to ascertain correctly, and to describe faithfully, the 
 great facts, and if they are inexplicable it is not his fault Every 
 thing in nature will not have been explained till time is no more. 
 
TERTIARY DILUVIAL AND ALLUVIAL. 67 
 
 In the present case however, we are quite sure that these interes- 
 ting relics are not referrible to the deluge ; that short, transient and 
 violent catastrophe; and it is wholly incredible and inadmissible, 
 that the plants and animals were made in the rocks. They are 
 not a lusus natures, and no solution presents itself to the writer, 
 but the one that has been given. 
 
 XXVII. In most of the earlier strata that have been described, 
 the animal remains are mineralized or petrified, that is they are 
 changed into rock or stone or other mineral matter, or at least 
 enclosed in it ; they form part of the solid strata ; they are found 
 at great depths, with vast piles of strata, and mountains, often 
 of different kinds of rocks, lying over them ; they extend in ma- 
 ny instances, hundreds of miles in continuity ; their number 
 exceeds all estimation ; and for all these reasons it is obvious, 
 that their deposition and that of the rocks in which they are 
 found must have occupied a great length of time. 
 
 The creation of the planet was no doubt instantaneous, as re- 
 gards the materials, but the arrangement, at least of the crust, ap- 
 pears to have been gradual. As a subject either of moral or 
 physical contemplation, we can say nothing better, than that it 
 was the good pleasure of God that this world should be called 
 into existence ; but, it seems also to have been his pleasure, that 
 the arrangement, by which it was to become a fit habitation for 
 man, was to be progressive.* 
 
 This is in strict analogy with the common course of things in 
 the physical, moral and intellectual world. The human mind, 
 the bodily powers, the inception and growth of the animal and 
 vegetable races, the seasons, seed time and harvest, science and 
 arts, wealth, civilization, national power and character, and a 
 thousand things more, evince, that progression is stamped upon 
 almost every thing, and that most things reach perfection, not 
 by a single leap, but rather by a slow, although sure course. 
 
 * It is a most remarkable fact, that every great feature in the structure of the 
 planet, corresponds with the order of the events narrated hi sacred history. 
 
68 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 The gradual preparation of this planet for its ultimate destina- 
 tion presents therefore no anomaly, and need not excite our sur- 
 prise. 
 
 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 XXVIII. There is decisive evidence that not further back than 
 a few thousand years, an universal deluge* swept the surface of 
 this globe, and produced certain alterations in its physiognomy. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS AS TO A POSSIBLE PHYSICAL CAUSE. 
 
 As the immediate cause of the deluge was the will of the deity, 
 it is not necessary to prove that he who created the planet, and 
 covered it with the primitive abyss, could again bring over it a 
 world of waters. 
 
 In a moral view then, it is sufficient to say that it was the ordi- 
 nance of heaven. 
 
 But as God, although able to effect the object by the fiat of his 
 command alone, usually works by means, it is very proper to en- 
 quire if there are any natural powers which might be employed 
 to deluge the earth. 
 
 The rain of heaven is mentioned as having descended for forty 
 days and forty nights, and the fountains of the great deep are 
 stated to have been broken up. It seems necessary therefore to 
 infer, not only that a deluge descended from the atmosphere, but 
 that it burst forth with violence, from the bowels of the earth. 
 In a physical view, such an event would seem to be indispensable, 
 as the atmosphere could discharge only the waters that had as- 
 cended into it, by evaporation, unless we imagine that water was 
 created for the purpose in the atmosphere, or brought into it from 
 other regions, either of which would be miraculous. 
 
 * The deluge of Noah as already stated, was however, totally distinct in its effects, 
 from those which we have attributed to the primeval waters of the great abyss, ex- 
 cept, that there may have been some similarity near the termination of the primitive 
 deluge, when its waters would most abound with mechanical effects and deposits. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 69 
 
 Although the scriptures are not to be regarded as a text book 
 in physics, their allusion to the rupture of the fountains of the 
 great deep seems not to be made without meaning. 
 
 When referring to the retiring of the first or primitive ocean, a 
 suggestion was made as to the possibility of the existence of cav- 
 erns in the bowels of the earth. It is true the fact cannot be 
 proved, but in a sphere of eight thousand miles in diameter, it 
 would appear in no way extraordinary, that many cavities may 
 exist, which collectively, or even singly, may well contain much 
 more than all our oceans, seas, and other superficial waters, none 
 of which are probably more than a few miles in depth. If these 
 cavities communicate in any manner with the ocean, and are (as 
 if they exist at all, they probably are,) filled with water, there ex- 
 ist, we conceive, agents sufficiently powerful to expel the water of 
 these cavities, and thus to deluge, at any time the dry land. 
 These agents are the aerial fluids, the vapors and the gases 
 whose competency to any and every degree of energy, which a 
 given mechanical movement may require, is abundantly exhibited, 
 in the rending force of gun-powder, and of the other still more 
 potent explosive chemical compositions, and in the phenomena 
 of earthquakes and volcanos, whose mechanical effects, depend 
 principally, upon the sudden and abundant evolution and great 
 expansion, by heat, of aerial bodies. These bodies, suddenly 
 evolved, (especially steam at a high temperature,) and subjected 
 to pressure and resistance, are sufficient, not merely to propel 
 cannon balls and bombs, to burst rocks and to explode mines 
 they can rend mountains they can shake them from their bases 
 and cause continents and the globe itself to vibrate and tremble. 
 If then, there were occasion to elevate a column of water even 
 six miles in height, above the present ocean level, so that it should 
 transcend the highest mountains; aerial fluids, aided by internal 
 heat, would be equal to the effort. Should they be disengaged, 
 abundantly, in the vast subterraneous and subaqueous cavities, 
 they would, of course, occupy the roof or vaults, and would 
 therefore expel the water, which we suppose they may con- 
 tain, and this water rising, and spreading itself over the dry land, 
 
70 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 might submerge the continents, more or less completely. In short 
 if heat were concerned, it would be merely a case of steam <>r com- 
 pressed air, acting to raise a column of water, as in a fire-engine. 
 If it be objected, that the pressure would split the incumbent earth, 
 we answer that it would do so did not its counteracting pressure, 
 arising from a specific gravity at least two or three times greater 
 than of water,* resist, with even superfluous energy, and the 
 overflowing water would add to the pressure. 
 
 It will be found that to cover the highest mountains, existing at 
 this time upon the earth, no more water would be required than 
 is sufficient to occupy a cavity whose cubical contents are equal 
 to about j part of those of the globe. If the cavity were in 
 the centre and were all in one, its diameter would be nearly one 
 thousand two hundred and seventy-seven miles, extending six hun- 
 dred and thirty-eight and a half miles each side of the centre, 
 and of course leaving over three thousand three hundred miles 
 for the thickness of the containing shell.t 
 
 If the void space were distributed in various parts of the globe, 
 of course the thickness of the walls must depend upon the prox- 
 imity to the surface ; but, a few leagues or perhaps miles of thick- 
 ness would be sufficient to give the strength, requisite, to resist 
 the pressure. 
 
 A force five times as great as that used with safety by Mr. Per- 
 kins, in his celebrated experiments with his generator, would raise 
 a column of water, and of course an ocean, higher than the top 
 of the Himmaleh mountains.]: 
 
 If volcanic or internal heat in the earth should create steam, suf- 
 ficiently abundant and elastic, to sustain this enormous pressure, 
 would it not throw the whole ocean into ebullition ? It would cause 
 the parts contiguous to the fire to become red hot, and to assume 
 the elastic form, or there would be no power generated, but wa- 
 
 * Possibly even much greater, according to the deductions of Masketyne and Hut- 
 ton on the specific gravity of the earth, 
 t Private communication to the author, 
 t Measuring from the surface of the present ocean. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 71 
 
 ter is so bad a conductor of heat that the ocean surrounding the 
 globe, and at a distance from the internal heated cavities, might 
 remain cold. A similar course of reasoning, will apply to the ex^ 
 trication of gas. 
 
 How would such an ocean elevated by aerial agency, ever de- 
 scend ? By condensation of the steam and absorption of the gas, 
 on the cessation of the heat. 
 
 Would not gas, and much more vapor, under a pressure of 
 perhaps many miles of water be of course condensed by the 
 force,* or be prevented from ever becoming aeriform ? It would 
 if cold, but igneous agency has no known limits and would, in a 
 given degree of intensity, counteract and overcome the conden* 
 sing effects of pressure. 
 
 Would not gas or vapor, as the earth revolved, escape, by 
 blowing out of the orifice, connecting the cavity with the surface ? 
 It would do so, if the channel had a particular direction in rela- 
 tion to the axis of the earth, but if parallel, and still more if tor- 
 tuous, (which corresponds with what we know of the inlets to 
 caverns,) the contained aerial matter or most of it would remain 
 imprisoned. It is not pretended that the method here sketched 
 was the one actually employed ; it is sufficient for the present 
 purpose to shew that it is physically possible. 
 
 Have we any case of analogous facts, which may redeem our 
 supposition from the appearance of hypothesis, invented for the 
 occasion? We have such a case : it is that of volcanic eruption. 
 According to Humboldt, lava sometimes issues, at an elevation of 
 eighteen thousand feet.t As we are wishing to apply a measure 
 to the supposed power, we will take this extreme case, for the 
 very reason, that it shews the extent of the power, (not its extent 
 in possibility, but as far as it has been hitherto ascertained.) 
 __ . _ . 
 
 * As Mr. Faraday has shown that many of the gases are actually condensed by 
 the conjoined effects of pressure and cold. 
 
 t The volcanic mountains in Hawaii, (Owhyhee.) Mouna Roa and Mouna Keg, 
 each estimated to be over eighteen thousand feet high, evince that this statement is 
 not exaggerated. Am. Jour. Vol. II. pa. 2. Cotopaxi is another example. 
 
 
 
72 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 Melted lava, especially under the pressure of so many thou- 
 sand feet of its own fluid substance, may be estimated to 
 have the specific gravity of at least 3. water being 1. Conse- 
 quently, a power which could raise lava eighteen thousand feet, 
 would raise water fifty-four thousand ; this would cover the Him- 
 maleh mountains, and leave twenty-eight thousand feet, (about 
 five miles and a third,) for the depth, from the surface of the earth, 
 of the cavity where the power might be exerted. 
 
 But this is not all. It is incredible that such volcanic moun- 
 tains as Mouna Kea and Mouna Roa in Owhyee, eighteen thou- 
 sand feet or more high ; TenerifTe twelve thousand five hundred ; 
 Cotopaxi twenty thousand, three hundred and twenty feet, all 
 raised by volcanic eruptions, could have the laboratory, from 
 which the power and the lava issue, at a smaller depth under the 
 surface, than that by which these mountain rise above it. With 
 any thickness of roof less than this, the whole covering must be 
 blown to atoms, by the tremendous effort which raises the lava. 
 
 Take here again the extreme case, Cotopaxi twenty thousand, 
 three hundred and twenty feet high : lava of sp. gr. 3. raised to 
 this height, would imply a power, that would raise water sixty 
 thousand, nine hundred and sixty feet, measuring only from the 
 level of the sea ; but, if the cavern, from which the lava issues, 
 is as deep in the earth as the mountain is high above it, the pow- 
 er exerted would raise water one hundred and twenty-one thou- 
 sand, nine hundred and twenty feet, or between twenty-one and 
 twenty-two miles. It will be observed, that the power which as 
 we know, actually raises the lava, is the same, that we suppose, 
 may be employed to raise the water, and this power is actually 
 exerted in caverns deep seated in the earth, for it is incredible 
 that a mountain that has itself been raised by volcanic eruptions, 
 and whose entire substance is congealed lava, should contain the 
 cavities from which floods of lava are still made to flow, age after 
 age, for the mountain would explode with its own throes and con- 
 vulsions, as that of Sumbawa in the island of Timor, did, not 
 many years since. We have proved therefore, that there "are 
 caverns in the earth, where igneous agency is exerted, and suf- 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 73 
 
 ficient power is generated, to raise all the water that would be 
 required to deluge the mountains. 
 
 Still, we do not affirm that this was actually the modus operan- 
 di; but merely, that the hypothesis is consistent with physical 
 laws, because the very case which we have supposed, is a frequent 
 occurrence, only the fluid raised is molten rock, instead of water. 
 We forbear to push our supposition to the extreme, by shewing 
 that it is probable, that volcanic cavities are often much deeper 
 than we have stated otherwise, the volcanic mountains might be 
 in danger of falling in, as the ancient dome of Kirauea probably 
 has done ; and it is very difficult otherwise to conceive, how vol- 
 canos communicate with each other under ground, and how the 
 earthquakes which they generate, are transmitted even to other 
 continents. 
 
 We forbear from stating other hypotheses which have been or 
 might be suggested ; such as that of the approximation of a 
 comet, or of other foreign planetary influence. 
 
 XXIX. The deluge of Noah was an exterminating and puni- 
 tive infliction ; sudden in its occurrence, short in its duration, and 
 violent in its effects. 
 
 The immense, and universally diffused masses of sand, clay, 
 loam, gravel, pebbles, bowlder stones, inhumed wood and forests, 
 bones and skeletons of gigantic, as well as of smaller animals, and 
 the vast cemeteries of animal remains discovered in caverns, owe 
 their preservation, and generally, (except the last, viz. the bones 
 in caverns,) their present position, to the overwhelming destruc- 
 tion of this mighty debacle. Professor Buckland, in his ReliquiaB 
 Diluvianae, has most ably illustrated this subject ; and it is ob- 
 vious, that the former practice, of attributing the organized re- 
 mains found in the solid strata, to this catastrophe, is founded en- 
 tirely in an imperfect acquaintance with the subject, and that no 
 man, at the present period, who had studied geology thoroughly, 
 would fall into such an error. 
 
 That the diluvial ocean was equal to all the violent effects now 
 attributed to it, can, we think, be proved, by a little attention to 
 the circumstances of the phenomenon. 
 
 10 
 
74 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 In stating these, I shall take it for granted, that the Mosaic ac- 
 count of the event, is true. I would remind the mere geologist, 
 that the evidence of probable history, is always admitted in the 
 statement and discussion of geological facts. In the present in- 
 stance, the history, without taking into view its divine origin, bears 
 every mark of verisimilitude. It is simple and perspicuous, and it is 
 also probable; because it corresponds with the appearances upon 
 the surface of the earth. We need not the history, in order to 
 prove the occurrence of an universal deluge. This is sufficiently 
 proved, by the vestiges left upon the globe, and geologists are 
 generally agreed in admitting the fact. 
 
 The only point, for the establishment of which we need to ad- 
 vert to the history, is the time which the catastrophe occupied, 
 and particularly, the great divisions of this time, by the ascent, 
 the continuance, and the decline of the waters. 
 
 Another preliminary to the statements which are to follow, is, 
 that the mountain ranges were the same at the time of the del- 
 uge as now, except that they are not so elevated. That an uni- 
 versal deluge has occurred, since the earth was peopled by hu- 
 man beings, is stated in a credible* history, namely, the Mosaic ; 
 the traditions, history, mythology and poetry of all nations, 
 contain allusions to the same event ; and it being distinctly stated 
 in the Scriptures, and implied in most of the other sources of in- 
 formation just alluded to, that its object was punitive, it of 
 course follows, that it happened since the completion of the se- 
 ries of geological events, which fitted the earth for the reception 
 of man. The mountains, being a part of the " great frame work" 
 of the globe, may reasonably be supposed to have existed before 
 the deluge , since, whatever may have been the proximate phys- 
 ical causes of that event, there is no reason to believe, that on that 
 occasion, continents sunk, or were born from the womb of the 
 deep; but on the contrary, there is positive geological evidence, 
 that the mountain's ranges are the same as before the deluge. 
 
 * We speak of it as credible, because it corresponds with physical appearances; 
 this being the point, essential to the geological argument. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 75 
 
 Every thing in the lucid and graphic history of the bible, leads 
 to the conclusion, that the waters rose till the land was submer- 
 ged, and not that the continents subsided into the bosom of the 
 earth. If they did subside, it must have been all hollow be- 
 neath them before ; but granting that they sunk into cavities, 
 what power raised the new continents,* or before sustained the old? 
 
 RISE OF THE WATERS. 
 
 Taking it for granted, that the antediluvian mountains were 
 the same as the present, but sometvhat higher, and that agreeably 
 
 * Mr. Penn. in his Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies, 
 (second edition,) has stated it as his opiuion, that the waters of the primitive abyss 
 retired into superficial cavities scooped out for them, by the breaking up and sink- 
 ing of the crust of the earth, or of as much of it as was necessary for that purpose ; 
 thus forming the bed of the ocean and seas, but, as he supposes the primitive ocean 
 to have been withdrawn in the course of a few days, and maintains that there was no 
 such thing as formation or progress in the deposition of the primitive rocks, but that 
 all their crystals and other constituent parts were created at once, as we now see 
 them, no reason appears why the planet was submersed at, all, and certainly none 
 why the great waters were so rapidly withdrawn. Mr. Penn, although strenuously 
 opposed to the admission of any more time before the creation of man than what is 
 commonly allowed, is still so much impressed with the utter impossibility of attributing 
 the mineralized organic remains and the fragmentary rocks of the globe to the tran- 
 sient catastrophe of the deluge, that he resorts to a supposition which appears quite 
 original. 
 
 Believing the organized remains to have been produced and petrified in the bosom 
 of the oceans and seas, as they existed between the creation of man and the deluge, 
 occupying a space of 1656 years, he supposes that when the deluge came, the then 
 existing continents were also broken up and plunged into the bowels of the globe, 
 and not only so, but that cavities were formed over these sunken continents so deep 
 that the seas and oceans were drained off from their former beds, running by subsi- 
 dence into these new cavities, and thus disclosing the bottom of the former seas and 
 oceans, which form the continents of our present habitable world. 
 
 As this theory supposes, in order to provide for the withdrawing of the two oceans, 
 namely, the primitive and the diluvial, that, first and last, the entire crust of the 
 planet, both the dry land and the submarine must have been broken up and sunk, 
 we are of course led to enquire, whether there was a general cavity beneath the en- 
 tire crust of the planet, (as a little globe is sometimes, in our artificial apparatus, 
 supported within the encircling rings of an armillary sphere, or like a nut loose in its 
 shell, or as the loose kernel (noyau) often included in the argillaceous iron ore, call- 
 ed cetite.) 
 
76 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 to the scripture history, they were all covered; we have the meas- 
 ure of the altitude of the flood ; and from the same history, we 
 learn also the time in which it rose. 
 
 Supposing that the highest elevation was five and a half miles ; 
 as it was forty days in rising, it rose nearly at the following rate, that 
 is, a foot in two minutes, thirty feet in an hour, one hundred and 
 eighty-one feet in the time of a common flood orebb tide,three hun- 
 dred and sixty-two feet in the entire time of the flux and reflux of a 
 tide, and seven hundred and twenty-six feel in twenty four hours. 
 This is upon the supposition that the waters rose upon the surface 
 
 If there were such a cavity what filled it before the subsidence ? What sustain- 
 ed the encircling hollow sphere in its place ? If there were no such cavities how 
 could the continents sink ? If the cavities were formed at the time by convulsions, 
 what became of the displaced materials ? 
 
 But, it is not necessary to pursue these enquiries ; for, the discoveries of Prof. 
 Buckland, as to the antediluvian caves, have proved, that the continents that now 
 exist above water, are the same that were inhabited before the flood. The caverns 
 that were then tenanted by hyenas, bears, and other wild animals, as their dens, pre- 
 sent innumerable specimens of their remains, and of those of the animals, or parts of 
 animals, which they dragged in for food, or which sought in these places a refuge 
 from the common danger; and these remains are covered by the diluvial sediment, 
 which was floated into them, when the waters were turbid with the suspended 
 mud, and thus these apparently trifling relics have been preserved to the present 
 day, as memorials of that great event. 
 
 It is impossible to give, on this occasion, even an abstract of the details by which 
 these indications are established.* 
 
 A diligent attention to the facts of the same class that have been discovered since 
 the publication of the Reliquiae ; a very careful re-perusal of that work for the second 
 and third time, after a full consideration of the objections of those two very acute 
 writers, Mr. Penn, an able critic, and of Dr. Fleming, an accomplished naturalist, 
 have left on the mind of the writer a conviction, in no degree impaired, that Profes- 
 sor Buckland's opinions respecting the identity of the ante and post diluvian conti- 
 nents are sound and correct. We have been delighted with Dr. Fleming's notices 
 of the history of the animal races in Britain and elsewhere, but we still believe 
 that the caverns were antediluvian, and of course, that the continents were not sunk 
 on that occasion, but drowned and ravaged in situ. 
 
 Any thing rather than conviction was produced by the effort of Mr. Penn to ac- 
 count for limestone caves and their diluvial bones, by the strange imagination, that 
 the supposed calcareous paste of the deluge had been blown up into caverns by the 
 
 * For an able analysis of this work by Prof. Hitchcock, see Am. Jour. Vol. VIII- 
 pp. 150 and 317. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 77 
 
 of a regular sphere, in which case, they would rise in vast ridgy 
 waves, presenting, every where, much the same appearance and 
 effects. But as the hills and mountains, over the entire surface of 
 the land, would oppose barriers to the rise of the water, the ra- 
 pidity of the tides would be much increased, and in many situa- 
 tions, the water would rise with redoubled force, and every where 
 overflow the land with increased rapidity. 
 
 In order to appreciate, justly, the effect of such a tremendous 
 rush of waters, we must compare it not only with common tides, 
 but with those more violent ones with which we are acquainted. 
 
 " Between Matacapa and the North Cape, in the place where 
 the great canal of the river Amazon is most confined by the isl- 
 ands, the tide presents a singular phenomenon. During the three 
 
 gases evolved during the " immense" putrefaction of the drowned and transported 
 elephants and other animals, involved in that paste, and inflating it by the gases 
 produced during their decomposition, and that thus these extraordinary excavations 
 were formed. 
 
 What blew up the stupendous caverns of Kentucky* and other western and south 
 western American states, extending for miles into the earth, and containing no bones 
 except a few inhumed skeletons of the aboriginal Indians ? Why is there no infla- 
 tion, around the bodies of fishes and of larger animals whose remains are found in 
 limestone and other rocks ? 
 
 We decline however to follow this subject, and while we acknowledge with 
 much satisfaction, the instruction derived from the study of both Mr. Penn's edi- 
 tions of his learned, elegant and very interesting work, we must be permitted to say, 
 that none of the geological theories which he has so ably combated, appear more 
 extravagant than the two to which we have adverted, and no writer on geology who 
 professes to be a believer in the scriptures, has taken that liberty with the history, 
 which Mr. Penn has done, who does not hesitate to pronounce the four verses which 
 mention the rivers issuing from paradise, to be marginal interpolations, because they 
 describe the then existing rivers as being the same that flowed there before the deluge. 
 
 To a writer of such high moral tone, and great mental power and acquirements 
 as Mr. Penn, we would not speak in the magisterial manner, which, very promi- 
 nent in his first edition, but softened in his second, would leave him in such case, 
 little cause to complain. 
 
 But his work, searching as it is, has served the cause of truth, and we feel obliged 
 to him for its publication, although he has, in our opinion, left the question between 
 the critics and the geologists embarrassed with all its difficulties. 
 
 * The mammoth cave of Kentucky has been explored for ten miles, without find- 
 ing an end ; these caves are in the ancient secondary or transition limestone. 
 
78 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 days nearest the full and new moons, (the times of the high tides,) 
 the sea, instead of employing nearly six hours to rise, attains its 
 highest elevation in the space of one or two minutes. It may 
 be supposed, that this is not effected very quietly : a terrific noise 
 is heard, at the distance of one or two leagues, which announces 
 the pororoca, (barre or bore ;) such is the name which the In- 
 dians of the district, give to this terrible tide. In proportion as 
 it advances, the noise increases, and presently, one beholds a 
 promontory of water, from twelve to fifteen feet in height ; then 
 a second, then a third and often a fourth ; which follow close up- 
 on each other, and which occupy the whole breadth of the canal. 
 This surge advances with a prodigious rapidity, breaking down 
 and shaving clean away, every thing that opposes it. I have, in 
 some places seen an extensive tract of soil carried away by the 
 pororoca, trees of very large dimensions uprooted, and devasta- 
 tions of every description. Wherever it passes, the coast is laid 
 as smooth as if it had been intentionally and carefully swept."* 
 
 Mr. Penn mentions also, the following fact, which he says, was 
 obtained from an eye-witness. 
 
 "At the mouth of a river in Nova Scotia, a schooner of thirty 
 two tons, laden with live stock, was lying with her side to the tide; 
 at the influx of the Bore ; which was then about ten feet in per- 
 pendicular height. No sooner had this mass of water reached 
 the vessel, than that great body was instantly turned over, like a 
 barrel and presently disappeared. After the tide had ebbed the 
 schooner was so totally absorbed into the sand, that the taffel or 
 upper rail of the deck, was alone visible." 
 
 This account corresponds with the the common statements, 
 respecting the tides in the bay of Fundy, which are said to 
 rise sixty feet, to come roaring in like a mighty rushing flood, 
 and that people and animals upon the beach sometimes, with 
 difficulty escape with their lives. 
 
 Similar facts are observed in the river Mersey, at Liverpool, 
 and in the Frome, a branch of the Severn, at Bristol, in England, 
 
 * Condamine's Voyage, quoted by Penn. Vol. II. p. 100. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 79 
 
 where the tides rise between twenty and thirty feet, rushing in, 
 through the channels, in a tumultuous torrent, which requires pe- 
 culiar precautions, to guard against its effects. 
 
 There are tides in England, of sixty or seventy feet in height. 
 The following notice of such a tide and of some other interesting 
 circumstances, connected with the flow, of water, was commu- 
 nicated to me, by a gentleman from Georgia, who had travelled 
 in England. 
 
 " The two principal branches of the river Wye, take their rise 
 in Hereford, and Montgomery Shires, and unite their waters, at 
 Monmouth, from whence to the Severn where it empties, the 
 Wye is navigable. But vessels with masts, never ascend be- 
 yond Chepstow, which is situated in Monmouthshire. The coun- 
 try through which this river runs, being of mountainous charac- 
 ter, its stream is consequently much broken by rapids, and cat- 
 aracts, and as it approaches Chepstow, it becomes much more nar- 
 row, being confined on either side by precipitous and rocky 
 sides. At Chepstow, the river makes a sudden curve, the town 
 occupying the convex side of the river. The strength of the 
 stream presses against the Gloucester bank, and an eddy is for- 
 med on the side of the town, by which vast depositions of mud 
 arid sand are made. But these encroachments, are often swept 
 away by the rapid and overwhelming floods that are occasion- 
 ally poured into the river, through the ravines under the Welsh 
 mountains. I was in Chepstow in 1820. Immediately previous 
 to my arrival at that place, there had been many successive days 
 of rain, and the tide was said to have risen sixty feet on that 
 occasion ! and I was informed by the inhabitants that it had 
 been higher. I saw many vessels in the stream secured by ca- 
 bles made fast to capstans on each side of the river. The ra- 
 pidity of the receding tide was so great, that the water was run- 
 ning two or three feet over the decks of some of the vessels, 
 while others which had not been sufficiently secured against leak- 
 age, were sunk; and it frequently happens that after rainy seasons, 
 vessels are unable either to receive, or deliver cargoes until the 
 mountains have " dried their cheeks." The old bridge across 
 
80 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION* 
 
 the Wye, which was swept away and rebuilt many times during 
 the last century was finally annihilated, by a freshet which hap- 
 pened sometime in 1813 or 1814. It stood on wooden piers, 
 raised more than forty feet from the bank of the river. The 
 present iron bridge is erected on stone piers, of nearly fifty feet 
 from the bank, and notwithstanding the immense piers of rock 
 and stone, (based in the bed of the river) which support its mid- 
 dle arches, the vibration occasioned by heavy floods is so great, 
 that it is considered dangerous to pass it at such seasons, 
 as the most gentle horses frequently take fright and do much 
 damage, when they find themselves on so unfirm a founda- 
 tion. I was told by an intelligent old gentleman of the town, 
 that of late the water has frequently risen much higher than it 
 did when he was a boy, which circumstance was attributed to the 
 great agricultural improvements, which had taken place on the 
 bank of this river, and particularly in draining, as the water, by 
 those means, was more suddenly conveyed into the stream. 
 
 " My old acquaintance also showed me a well, situated in a 
 garden about three hundred yards from the river, whose water 
 ebbed and flowed, (as regularly as the river) fourteen feet per- 
 pendicular. A little before the tide had attained its height, the 
 water in the well began to recede ; at high water the well was 
 dry, and shortly after the river began to ebb, the water of 
 the well returned. The regularity of this routine was more affec- 
 ted by wet than dry weather."* 
 
 * We had occasion, under the head of land slips and slides, p. 20, to mention those 
 of the White mountains, and they were cited also as instances of diluvial action. 
 
 We now add a notice of a slide in the mountains of Vermont, in illustration of the 
 same subject. 
 
 It happened in Lincoln, Addison county, on the 27th of June, 1827, in the fore- 
 noon. The slide commenced near the top of the mountain, between two large rocks 
 which were stripped of earth, opening a passage of four rods wide, from which it 
 proceeded in a south easterly direction, gradually widening for the distance of two 
 hundred rods, to the south branch of Mill Brook in Fayston. In its course it swept 
 every thing in its way ; overturning trees, divesting them of their roots, branches 
 and bark, and often breaking them into short pieces. A number of rocks weighing 
 from fifteen to twenty tons were moved some distance. From where it entered 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 81 
 
 It is obvious that these facts are cited, in order to give us some 
 standard views by which we may estimate the force of great 
 moving waters, especially when their power is increased by lat- 
 eral pressure, operating to narrow the channels in which they 
 flow. 
 
 Every great rain gives us similar evidence, by the effects of the 
 torrents which it creates, or greatly augments. They produce 
 frightful devastation in their course, and sometimes bear before 
 them every thing but the firmly fixed mountain rocks. 
 
 It would not be easy to cite a more striking instance of dilu- 
 vial ravages, than those produced by the eruptions of Long Lake 
 into Mud Lake, in Vermont, June 6, 1310,* on which occasion, 
 
 * American Journal, Vol. XI. p. 39. 
 
 Mill Brook, its course was in a north easterly direction, two hundred and eighty 
 rods, the natural course of the brook being very small ; but the channel cut by this 
 torrent is now from two to ten rods in width ; and on either side are large quantities 
 of flood wood piled up very high ; and from fifteen to twenty rods of the lower 
 part it is blocked up across the channel in every direction ; some of the trees are 
 standing on their tops, and generally stripped of roots, branches and bark, and broken 
 into many pieces. A large birch tree, measuring three feet nine inches, was broken 
 off square. A black ash was literally pounded into a broom, whose brush is seven 
 feet long. The force of the water was very great ; in some places, it must have 
 been thirty feet deep. Some of the trees on the sides of the channel were barked 
 thirty or forty feet high, and there was mud on them at that height. 
 
 The report was heard at the distance of several miles, and by some was thought to 
 be an earthquake by others, a clap of thunder, but unaccountably prolonged and 
 attended by a perceptible, continued jar. Fortunately, as it was a number of miles 
 distant from any human abode, wild beasts alone, were exposed to its ravages.* 
 
 In its whole course before reaching Mill Brook, it swept through a dense forest, 
 mostly of hemlock and spruce, and took off the entire surface, and every thing which 
 it contained. The ground appeared to be as free from roots as if it had been tilled 
 for fifty years. Some trees which were so firmly rooted in the rocks, that they 
 could not be drawn out, were pounded off upon a level with the surface of the 
 ground, as if they had been but slender reeds. At some distance above the stream 
 the mass parted, and left a few rods square of timber standing but soon united 
 again and rushing on in all its tremendous power, struck obliquely against the 
 opposite bank of Mill Brook, with a concussion that shook the- mountains. When- 
 
 * A similar occurrence took place a few years since upon the same peak, but on a 
 much smaller scale. 
 
 11 
 
82 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 earth, stones, large rocks, trees and forests, animals, mills, and 
 other structures, were borne away with resistless impetuosity, 
 with the noise of loud thunder, and the concussion of an earth- 
 quake excavating the small outlet of the lakes, called Barton 
 river, into a channel, sometimes one-eighth of a mile wide, and 
 sixty or eighty feet deep the devastation extending fourteen 
 miles in length, and, to a degree, twenty two miles, quite to 
 Lake Memphremagog. 
 
 The effects of the great storm of July 26, 1819, in the Cattskill 
 range;* and those of the tempest in the White mountains,! in 
 New Hampshire, August, 1826, by which the great slides in the 
 
 * American Journal, Vol. IV. p. 125. t Already cited p. 20 of this sketch. 
 
 ever a check was given to its progress, the torrent soon accumulated force sufficient 
 to burst every barrier and again the huge pile proceeded, thundering down the 
 mountain. The forest seems to have been prostrated with as much ease as if it had 
 been but a field of grain. The mass evidently went down in the wildest confusion. 
 The trees sometimes erect, or sweeping around in circles, struck those upon the 
 banks of the stream as appeared by the bark frequently taken off at a great height 
 now their tops and roots, alternately projecting forward, and again lying across the 
 current, were shivered in an instant. They are left in considerable numbers through- 
 out the whole course, some lying upon the banks, others in the channel, and wholly 
 or in part, buried in the sand and rocks. But the principal part of the timber swept 
 from twenty-five acres of forest, now converted into a barren waste, lies piled in a 
 confused heap, covering perhaps an acre of ground, one mile and a half from the 
 spot where the slide commenced! Here, having already spent much of its force, 
 and the mountain growing less precipitous, it struck into a cluster, of firmly rooted 
 trees and was compelled to stop. At this place it presents a perpendicular wall of 
 logs, &c. across the entire channel, in some places ten or fifteen feet high. The up- 
 per end of the pile is buried beneath the sand and stones, and the stream now runs 
 over the top. Perhaps those very logs will be dug out in after times as fossil wood. 
 Every thing in this mass, bears the marks of the greatest violence. Almost every 
 tree is completely divested of its roots, branches, and bark, as could have been ef- 
 fected by man, with the proper instruments. They are pounded and splintered and 
 broken into all imaginable shapes and lengths. The scene is well worth the atten- 
 tion of all who have never witnessed the effects produced by the agency of rush- 
 ing torrents of water. No one who has contemplated such scenes, can doubt, 
 that water is adequate to the production of any of those effects, which are ascribed 
 to the deluge. Cited from Mr. Baldwin's statement, American Journal, Vol. XV. 
 p. 228. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 83 
 
 notch were produced, will afford us additional evidence of the 
 tremendous power of great moving waters. 
 
 The following fact is cited by Mr. Penn, (Vol. I. p. 50, Introd.) 
 
 "On the 14th of October, 1822, a wave, which, during a 
 storm, broke against the pier of Ramsgate, and was dashed up- 
 wards to a height of about fourteen feet, fell again upon the 
 stone pavement of the pier head ; and, by the force of its reac- 
 tion, instantaneously raised a thirty-six pound carronade, with its 
 carriage, over a stone ledge, and precipitated it into the sea. The 
 harbor men assured me, that it would have required the utmost 
 efforts of twenty men, to effect the same operation. " 
 
 In the great tempest of September, 1815, among many similar 
 effects, which happened all along the shores of New England, 
 a vast ridgy wave, raised by the hurricane, came suddenly, in 
 an overwhelming deluge, upon the lower town of Providence, in 
 Rhode Island, and, by its force, entire rows of houses, and stores, 
 and ware-houses, were, in a few minutes, prostrated. Ships of 
 three and four hundred tons, were thrown upon the wharves, 
 knocking down large buildings by their momentum; some were 
 carried into the town, thrusting their jib-booms in at the second and 
 third stories of houses; others were lodged in the streets, and a 
 number, and those some of the largest,* after carrying away a 
 strong bridge, were driven through a bay, usually too shallow, even 
 for small craft, and were thrown up, high and dry, upon a beach, 
 where the salt water has never been since, and may, perhaps, 
 never come again. Nothing would be easier than to swell the 
 list of such events ; but these are sufficient for our purpose. 
 
 If such effects are produced by torrents, and tides of limited 
 extent, and short duration, the highest of which scarcely equals 
 one third part of that of the diluvial tides, for the same time, and 
 whose duration was not equal, in any instance, to T ^ part of that 
 of the waters of the deluge if such ravages were committed by 
 the Pororoca of the Amazon, by the Bore of Nova Scotia, and 
 by the tides of the English Wye, what must have been those of 
 the forty days tide of the deluge ! 
 
 * Among them, the Ganges, formerly a sloop of war. 
 
84 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 Granting the measure of time given in the history of the event, 
 and that of the elevation afforded by the highest existing moun- 
 tains, (both of which appear to be fair grounds of reasoning,) it is 
 not easy to exalt the imagination to an adequate conception of 
 the terrors of that awful catastrophe. The inconceivably violent 
 torrents and cataracts, every where descending from the hills and 
 mountains, and meeting a tide, rising at the rate of more than 
 seven hundred feet in twenty-four hours resisted and aggravat- 
 ed in force, wherever it encountered the land, and still more, the 
 hills, and the mountain ridges ; accompanied, also, we may pre- 
 sume, by other great instruments of almighty power the tempest, 
 the volcano, and the earthquake : but with, or without them 
 impelled with resistless violence it must have swept over the sur- 
 face, with a force vastly greater than any thing that we now know 
 of the mightiest rushing waters. It evidently rolled every where 
 over the various inequalities of land, in tremendous agitated bil- 
 lows ; and where it was narrowed by ridges, and hills, and moun- 
 tains, and thus forced through valleys and defiles, it must have 
 presented innumerable raging torrents and cataracts, of awful 
 height, force and magnitude, compared with which, even Niaga- 
 ra would be insignificant ; and at that time stupendous rapids and 
 cataracts necessarily existed, wherever the water pitched over 
 barriers and precipices.* 
 
 PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF THE DELUGE. 
 
 Are there any appearances upon the surface of the planet, 
 proving that it has been ravaged by a violent, sudden, and tran- 
 
 * However proper in a moral, it is not necessary in a geological view, to advert to 
 the terrors of the animal creation and still more, to the dismay and despair of the 
 human race. The traditions of all nations, shew that an indelible impression has 
 been made by the event. Painters and poets have drawn the most vivid and pain- 
 fully sublime pictures of those overwhelming scenes : and to their graphic touches 
 we leave the subject. 
 
 Nor do we think it incumbent on us to shew, that the ark was safe amid that 
 mighty movement of waters. A broad flat vessel, probably without spars and rig- 
 ging, deeply laden, might well stand the agitation of that ocean; and, if grounded, 
 it would be but for a moment, as the rising flood would immediately lift the floating 
 structure clear again. ' 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 8 
 
 sient deluge ? The answer is, that they are numerous and con- 
 vincing. 
 
 The effects of the deluge were not forming, but destroying ef- 
 fects: they were mechanical, and not chemical. There is not 
 the least reason to believe, that any solid rock was produced at 
 that period, nor that any of the firmly imbedded and petrified or- 
 ganized remains belong to this epoch. The diluvial ocean was 
 agitated by a mighty moving force, or it would never have attain- 
 ed its greatest elevation within forty days ; it was turbid in the 
 extreme, and filled with the wreck of the surface of the planet, 
 with moving rocks, stones, gravel, earth, and coarse and fine sed- 
 iment and with extirpated and floating vegetables, and drowned 
 animals. 
 
 Its various effects may be included under, 
 
 1. Disposition of mineral masses. 
 
 2. Of animal and vegetable. 
 1. Mineral diluvium. 
 
 The distinction between diluvium and alluvium has been al- 
 ready pointed out. 
 
 Diluvium is found every where. The almost universal depos- 
 its of rolled pebbles, and bowlders of rock, not only on the 
 margin of the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers ; but their existence, 
 often in enormous quantities, in situations quite removed from 
 large waters ; inland, imbedded in high banks, or scattered, 
 occasionally, in profusion, on the face of almost every region, 
 and sometimes on the tops and declivities of mountains, as 
 weir as in the valleys between them ; their entire difference, in 
 many cases, from the rocks in the country where they lie round- 
 ed masses, and pebbles of primitive rocks, being deposited in sec- 
 ondary and tertiary regions, and vice versa ; these, and a multi- 
 tude of similar facts, have ever struck us as being among the most 
 interesting of geological occurrences, and as being very inade- 
 quately accounted for by former theories. Pebbles may, in giv- 
 en instances, be formed, (possibly,) by decomposition of the an- 
 gular portions of a stone by various chemical agencies, aiding 
 those of a mechanical nature but an immense number, and, in 
 
36 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 our view, much the greater number of pebbles, present unques- 
 tionable evidence of having been brought to their rounded form 
 by friction. 
 
 The attrition of the common waters of the earth, and even that 
 exerted during the comparatively short period, of the prevalence 
 of the deluge of Noah, would do very little towards producing so 
 mighty a result ; and we must assign this operation to the more 
 recent periods of the prevalence of the first ocean. 
 
 Diluvial formations have a wave-like or undulating appear- 
 ance. 
 
 This we have often observed in the plain of New Haven, and 
 in other regions of Connecticut and New England exhibiting 
 frequently, a delicacy of flexion, in the layers of gravel and sand, 
 which makes them appear as if they had, but a moment before, 
 received their impulse and position from undulating water, and 
 as if they had copied the very eddies and gyrations of the wave. 
 
 Bowlder stones,* consisting of fragments of primitive rocks, 
 probably from north of the great lakes, are found abundantly 
 on the secondary regions of Ohio and Kentucky ; the fragments 
 of the primitive Alps, on the Jura chain, (the lake of Geneva 
 intervening ;) the ruins of the Scandinavian mountains on the 
 secondary and diluvial plains of Prussia and Northern Germany, 
 (the Baltic being between,) and the fragments of the northern 
 counties of England, cover the southern and middle regions. 
 
 In many cases, bowlders and pebbles can be traced to their 
 native beds, and frequently they are strangers to the regions 
 where they are found. 
 
 Deserts of sand, covering tracts more or less extensive, such as 
 those in South Africa, and in the Zahara, stretching in a vast 
 belt, from the Atlantic ocean to the desert of Lybia ; the sandy 
 plains of Arabia, Germany, and Russia the great desert at the 
 foot of the Rocky mountains, and all similar deposits, in situa- 
 
 * The rock, in Horeb, that, being smitten by the rod, gave forth water, is, accor- 
 ding to SHAW, a bowlder of granite. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DJLUyiAL ACTION. 87 
 
 lions where no existing causes could leave them, are, with great 
 propriety, referred to the deluge. 
 
 The diluvial waters appear to have transported and arranged 
 these masses, by sedimentary deposition, and that they had suffi- 
 cient power to roll even bowlder stones and disjointed columns* 
 to great distances, is sufficiently evident, from what we know of 
 the energy of torrents in our own time. 
 
 Beds of sand, gravel, clay, loam, pebbles and bowlders are 
 found to compose the loose materials of every country, and they 
 invariably exhibit the appearance of deposition from water, 
 sometimes tranquil, sometimes more or less agitated. 
 
 The effects of the devastation which every where marked the 
 rise of the deluge, were in a considerable degree veiled, by the 
 gradual depositions of sedimentary matter that took place during 
 the decline of the waters. The history informs us that the waters 
 rose forty days, prevailed one hundred and fifty days, and gradu- 
 ally retired during six months, thus affording a long period, of 
 comparative tranquillity, for the arrangement of the universal 
 sedimentary beds which we now see. 
 
 As at the termination of the first ocean, there must have been 
 a multitude of local lakes, determined, by the basin shape, so often 
 traced by contiguous hills and high grounds ; in these, sepa- 
 rate and independent deposits were doubtless going on, for a 
 length of time, even after the earth began to be repeopled. 
 Those lakes that had no permanent supply of water, would, of 
 course be exhausted by soakage and by evaporation: others 
 would burst their barriers, or gradually wear them down and re- 
 new the diluvial ravages, during their escape; while those only 
 would be perennial, which were fed by streams or springs. 
 
 Many valleys of denudation, as they are called by Prof. Buck- 
 land, were probably produced by the deluge of Noah. Such val- 
 
 * Such as the columns of trap, sometimes of enormous size, which are found scat- 
 tered, up and down, through the great Connecticut valley, often at a great distance 
 from their parent ridges. The most remarkable case in this range, is ten miles west 
 of Hartford, on the Albany turnpike. See Tour to Quebec. 
 
38 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 leys are conspicuously seen in the South of England : similar 
 strata are found capping contiguous hills, projecting at their 
 sides, and running beneath their foundations ; a curve or hollow 
 having been scooped out between, thus indicating the effects of 
 great rushing torrents, attended perhaps by convulsions, that 
 more or less, broke up the superficial strata.* 
 
 It is not intended that all valleys were produced in this man- 
 ner; many doubtless were thus formed, and many more were 
 deepened and modified, but a multitude of them were probably 
 among the original features of the planet, or produced by early 
 convulsions. 
 
 What has been said of diluvium is not intended to exclude the 
 idea of alluvium. This is forming at all times by the action of 
 causes now in full operation, and many instances of great effects of 
 this kind might be cited ; as at the mouth of the Nile, of the 
 Mississippi, and in many other embouchures, in bays or sea coasts, 
 lake shores, &c. On this subject it is not necessary to enlarge.* 
 
 2. Animal and vegetable bodies covered by diluvium. 
 
 A. Human Remains. 
 
 Are there any remains of the human race covered by the di- 
 luvium ? Until very recently, it has been confidently answered 
 that none have been found. The human skeletons discovered in 
 tufaceous limestone both in Gaudaloupe, (Phil. Trans, of Lond.,) 
 and more recently in Brazil, (Phila. Trans.) being arranged in 
 uniform order, parallel, sloping, and with their heads all one way T 
 were doubtless deposited in this manner for burial. 
 
 Those at Gaudaloupe, being situated where the tide ebbs and 
 flows over them, were evidently in a more elevated situation with 
 respect to water when they were interred than now ; and water 
 has probably been the agent, by means of which, the tufaceous 
 rock has been formed around them. The circumstances of those 
 in Brazil indicate that water has stood over them also, but they 
 
 * See this subject ably investigated and illustrated in the Reliquiae Dilnviana 
 t See Dr. H. H. Hayden's interesting geologjeal^essays. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 89 
 
 are several miles from the present sea, and the peculiar arrange- 
 ment and other circumstances of both deposits, indicate that the 
 bodies were interred with the rights of sepulture, and of course 
 that they cannot be diluvial relics. For our present purpose, it is 
 not necessary to discuss these facts any farther. 
 
 If there be any human remains, hitherto ascertained, that may 
 be referred to the diluvial catastrophe, they are, perhaps, those 
 discovered in the cavern of Durfort, in France,* and in the quar- 
 ries of Kosrutz, in Germany. It would appear possible, perhaps 
 probable, that the human remains found in these situations, were 
 deposited there by the deluge. Such discoveries may be, here- 
 after, multiplied. They should be received with caution ; but 
 they cannot fail to be acceptable, both to the friends of geology 
 and of the early scripture history. 
 
 When it is considered, that, excepting straggling colonies, 
 scattered here and there, in remoter countries, the human family, 
 at the time of the deluge, had probably, not extended far beyond 
 the neighborhood of the Euphrates, the Tigris and other vicinal 
 Asiatic countries ; that even those countries, may not have been, 
 at that time, very populous ; that many of the corpses may have 
 been swept into the ocean, many more buried deep in diluvium 
 or in accidental cavities and fissures ; that those countries, being 
 without curiosity and without science ; and under an arbitrary 
 and jealous government, there is little probability, that discover- 
 ies relating to the extirpated human family, would be made, or, 
 if made accidentally, that the remains would be regarded, by 
 the ignorant and incurious inhabitants, in any other light, than 
 those found in burying grounds. 
 
 Under a different sway, it is not, perhaps, improbable, that di- 
 luvial human bones may hereafter be found in Asia ; but under 
 present circumstances, their absence does not operate, in any de- 
 gree, against the reality of the deluge, attested as it is, by so 
 many geological facts, as well as by the history. 
 
 * Penn, Vol. II. p 394. 
 
 12 If 
 
90 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 B. Remains of Animals and Vegetables. 
 
 These are very numerous and equally unquestionable. 
 
 We would by no means insist, that every skeleton and bone, 
 found in diluvium, was buried there by the grand catastrophe. 
 We are willing to allow a reasonable number, and all that can on 
 probable evidence be thus referred, to mere accidents, and to di- 
 luvium or alluvium, of a more modern date than that of the 
 deluge.* 
 
 Single bones, parts of skeletons, and entire skeletons of the 
 larger animals, often of extinct species, but mostly of known ge- 
 nera, are found abundantly in the diluvium of all countries, where 
 curiosity and intelligence exist. 
 
 Whales, sharks and other fishes ; crocodiles and other am- 
 phibia ; the mammoth or the extinct elephant; species of ele- 
 phants, nearly or quite like those of modern times; the rhinoceros, 
 the hippopotamus ; hyenas, tigers, deer, horses ; various species of 
 the bovine family, and a multitude more, are found buried in the 
 diluvium, at a greater or less depth ; and in most instances, un- 
 der circumstances indicating that they were buried by the same 
 catastrophe, which destroyed them ; namely, a sudden and vio- 
 lent deluge. 
 
 The interesting and instructive geological essays of Dr. H. H. 
 Hayden, may be consulted, for a series of facts, relating to the 
 diluvium of the Atlantic portion of the middle and southern states 
 of North America. It appears, that under this diluvium, there is 
 buried a great quantity of the bones of whales, sharks, porpoises, 
 mammoths, Asiatic elephants and other large animals, along with 
 numerous trees, sometimes' with their fruit. Layers of marine 
 
 * We are not unwilling to concede every fact, that can fairly be claimed, by the 
 ingenious writer, who would have the inhumed remains of elephants and other large 
 animals, referred to the celebration of Roman and Tartarian games, and to their war- 
 like movements; but he must not demand too much. What Roman or Mongul 
 Tartar emperor, ever marched armies or held his court in either of the Americas, on 
 the Ohio, in New Jersey and New York, or at Cheshire, near New Haven, and in 
 innumerable other places, where the bones of the mammoth and of other gigantic 
 animals have been found ? 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 91 
 
 mud, are also found, deep beneath the diluvium, below the pres- 
 ent low water mark. 
 
 There are also vast quantities of shells, and especially of a gi- 
 gantic oyster, in many parts of the southern states. They are 
 found, not only in digging for wells, but they form vast beds in 
 various places. 
 
 One of the largest beds on the eastern continent, is near Tours, 
 in France ; it is twenty seven miles long and twenty feet thick. 
 
 But the beds of the southern states far exceed this. A stra- 
 tum, on the whole continuous, although mixed, more or less, 
 with the general diluvium, and other materials of the country, 
 has been traced from the Eutaw springs, in South Carolina, to 
 the Chickasaw country ; six hundred miles in length, by ten, or 
 from that to one hundred, in breadth.* 
 
 There can be little doubt that many of the beds of oyster 
 shells which have been attributed to the aboriginal Indians of 
 this country are diluvial deposits. 
 
 The bones and skeletons of large animals, especially of the 
 mammoth, are found in wide dispersion, and in very remote 
 countries; in both Americas, in Europe and in Asia. In northern 
 Asia, the tusks of the extinct elephant, are discovered in the diluvial 
 banks of almost every river, and the ivory is found in such abund- 
 ance, as to be a regular article of commerce. An enormous car- 
 case,t of the northern or Asiatic elephant, a few years since, by 
 the gradual thawing of the frozen bank, in which it was imbed- 
 ded, high above the water, fell down and exhibited the flesh in 
 full preservation ; the long bristly hair and vast massy hide, re- 
 quiring a large number of men, to carry it, afforded proof irre- 
 fragable, of the existence of the animal in those rigorous climates, 
 and of his sudden extinction, inhumation and congelation, with 
 so little interval of time, that putrefaction had not commenced, 
 and has not since taken place, during a long succession of ages. 
 
 Indeed, there is but one view which appears to carry with it 
 the least probability, as to the cause of the wide dispersion and 
 
 * Mr. Finch in American Journal of Science, Vol. VII. p. 4Q. 
 4 Notes to Cvivier's Introductory Discourse, 
 
92 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 sepulture of the gigantic races ; especially of extinct animals in 
 the various quarters of the world. It seems evidently to have 
 been the work of the deluge, which at once drowned, and in ma- 
 ny instances, extinguished whole races of animals, and buried 
 their bodies in the wreck of the planet with which those waters 
 were evidently filled. Such a scene of awful devastation, was as 
 well fitted to produce these effects, as it was ill adapted, to the 
 comparatively tranquil life and death of the successive genera- 
 tions of marine and aqueous animals, that peopled the early ocean 
 in its middle and later stages. Organized remains are found at 
 very high levels, not only mineralized but loose or in diluvium, 
 thus proving the prevalence of the ocean, at different periods. 
 
 It is said that the skeleton of a whale lies on the top of the 
 mountain Sandhorn, on the coast of the northern sea. The 
 mountain is three thousand feet high, and there is no cause that 
 could have conveyed the whale to that elevation, except a deluge 
 rising to that height.* 
 
 So late as June 1824, the remains of a whale were found on 
 the westernmost Stappen, a mountain in Fmmarck, at an eleva- 
 tion of eight hundred feet above the ocean. The specimens 
 which were reported to be vertebrae, were lost by shipwreck on 
 their passage to England. Similar remains are said to exist also 
 in North Fugeloe, another mountain in those regions.? 
 
 It is common to find trees and their members in the diluvium, 
 and also in the known alluvium of rivers, &c. In general, they 
 are not much altered ; sometimes they are partially bituminized 
 or verge towards lignite, or perhaps are really lignite ; at other 
 times, they are penetrated by acids and saline substances, and 
 metallic minerals, as pyrites, are occasionally formed upon them. 
 
 It has been already said that there is no difference in the na- 
 ture of the operations by which diluvium and alluvium are produ- 
 ced, and that we must resort to an induction of particulars in order 
 to enable us to distinguish between them, but in most situations, 
 especially those that are remote from rivers and moving waters, 
 there is very little occasion for hesitation, in forming an opinion. 
 
 * Perm, Vol. II. pa. 303. t Ibid. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 98 
 
 Extinction of Animal Races by the Deluge. 
 
 We cannot reasonably doubt, that many of the skeletons and 
 bones of the animal races, which we find buried in ancient dilu- 
 vium, in caverns, and in fissures in rocks, were covered by the 
 wreck and sediment of the deluge ; others have evidently been 
 covered since, by ordinary or extraordinary events, and our decis- 
 ion, as to the era to which we are to assign them, respectively, 
 must depend on the circumstances of each particular case. 
 
 But, is it necessary to suppose, that all the extinct races of 
 large animals, found in diluvium, were destroyed at the deluge ? 
 If the account of the animals that were preserved in the ark, is 
 to be understood so strictly, as to include every genus and every 
 species, then we need make no other variation in our conclusions, 
 than that, while all the animals, except a few individuals of each 
 species, perished in the deluge ; and therefore, their remains may 
 be naturally found in ancient diluvium ; some genera and species, 
 of which the representatives were preserved in the ark, with the 
 other animals, have perished since, by unknown causes, so that 
 their races have disappeared entirely from the earth. There can 
 be no objection to this admission it does not weaken, at all, our 
 view of the peculiar and destroying effects of the deluge.* While 
 we make this remark, we must not however forget, that the fish 
 are not mentioned in the history of the deluge. The obvious 
 answer to this is, that being tenants of the waters, they might 
 well be left to take care of themselves. 
 
 Whatever difficulties may arise, from the universal prevalence 
 of a stormy, agitated ocean, (at least stormy and agitated during its 
 rise, although comparatively pacific after it had attained its height, 
 
 * Although it appears to me nearly certain, that most of the mastodons perished at 
 the deluge, I have no objection to admitting, that some of them, whose skeletons are 
 found, may have perished before, or since that event. Those that are buried in an- 
 cient diluvium, as that whose remains were recently discovered near New Haven, 
 in the gravel arising from the decomposition of the old red sandstone rock, were 
 clearly antediluvian, and probably destroyed by the deluge ; while some that have 
 been discovered, foundered in salt licks and marshes, may have perished by miring, 
 as cattle do at the present day. 
 
94 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 and during its decline,) an ocean filled with the wreck of the sur- 
 face, turbid with mud, and unfriendly to the preservation even of 
 fishes, especially, as they include the species, both of salt and 
 fresh water, and therefore of widely different habits : we may 
 suppose, that a few might still escape destruction, and thus pre- 
 serve the races, although the greater number evidently perished, 
 along with the land animals. As might be expected therefore, 
 we find the skeletons of large fishes, (whales, sharks, &c.) buried 
 in ancient diluvium, or grounded on high mountains, especially 
 where cold and ice have aided in preserving the remains from 
 decomposition.* 
 
 Preservation of Vegetables. 
 
 Without supposing that the ark was a green house, or a repos- 
 itory of antediluvian seeds, it would perhaps not appear incredible, 
 that Noah, so long warned of the approaching catastrophe, which 
 was to tear away the soil, and root up the forests by the force of 
 rushing waters, should have preserved some of the more impor- 
 tant esculent plants and seeds ; a degree of care not exceeding 
 that which is exercised by every leader of a colony, when passing 
 over seas to a new abode. But, however this may have been, 
 there is no serious difficulty in believing, that in an ocean, which, 
 from its magnitude and depth, was probably never warmed to 
 that degree that favors germination, or vegetable decomposition : 
 seeds of almost every kind, may have floated, uninjured, during 
 the short period of a year, (for we know that seeds and ? seed 
 vessels, are actually floated from continent to continent, without 
 losing their germinating powers,) and when the waters subsided, 
 they would of course, at least those that were in favorable cir- 
 cumstances, again shoot and grow. 
 
 We know also that seeds lie uninjured in the earth for many 
 years, for every movement of the soil in cultivation is sure, after 
 a little repose, to bring up a new crop of plants, and successive 
 
 * We do not refer to remains of fishes in the solid rocks, which obviously belong 
 to the first ocean. 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 95 
 
 crops spring up spontaneously, on the same ground, even when 
 left untiiled from year to year. 
 
 It is obvious also, that the roots of plants and trees, would 
 again strike into the ground and vegetate anew, as soon as the 
 waters were sufficiently withdrawn, and the kindly influence of 
 the sun was felt. 
 
 There seems therefore no serious difficulty in the restoration of 
 vegetation to the earth, after the deluge.* 
 
 The loose materials by which the surface was covered, were a 
 mixture of all preceding soils, and therefore fitted for the imme- 
 diate renewal of vegetation. Horticulture and agriculture, espe- 
 cially the cultivation of the vine, (which needs little besides sand, 
 and sun, and moisture, to make it grow,) might therefore have 
 been resumed immediately. As vegetation increased, the soil 
 would of course improve in fertility, by a natural process of ma- 
 nuring. 
 
 SUBSIDENCE OF THE DILUVIAL OCEAN. 
 
 The retiring waters of the Noachic deluge occupied half a year 
 in their descent ; and thus time was allowed, for that gradual and 
 comparatively tranquil deposit and arrangement of the ruins of 
 the surface, of which we every where find the most decisive evi- 
 dence.! 
 
 * Nor does the diluvial action, violent as we have supposed it to be, necessarily 
 imply the extirpation of every plant; an olive may have been plucked from the tree 
 in place, protected by some peculiar circumstances of situation. 
 
 t Taking the Himmaleh mountains as the measure of the height of the deluge,- it 
 fell at the rate of about one hundred and forty feet in twenty-four hours, or a little 
 less than six feet in an hour which, although a rapid descent for a common tide, was 
 slow, compared with the ascent of the diluvial waters; & partial deluge, pervading 
 the earth for a year, could not have happened ; it must have flowed all round the 
 globe. Statical principles forbid us to suppose that it was accumulated over a part of 
 the world, and not over the whole. I know not on what authority, physical or his- 
 torical, any person is permitted to say, that its elevation was less, than to cover "all 
 the high hills and mountains under the whole heaven." 
 
96 THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 
 
 Nothing in geology has struck me with more interest, than the, 
 beautiful arrangement, in strata, of the beds of sand, gravel, clay, 
 loam and pebbles, which may be observed in every country. A 
 section of a bank of any of these deposits or better still, an 
 avulsion or fall, which leaves the stratification exposed, without 
 being obscured, by the rubbish, produced by digging, or by the 
 sliding of loose sand never fails to exhibit the effects of sedi- 
 mentary deposit.; sometimes horizontal sometimes inclined at 
 various angles, great or small sometimes undulatory, and re- 
 cording, in a language that cannot be misunderstood, the effects 
 of subsiding water. The beds are not .always in the order of the 
 magnitude of the parts. Sometimes coarser gravel, or even peb- 
 bles, will form a layer, above fine sand, and then perhaps the or- 
 der will be reversed, indicating that there were currents, and 
 these, relenting and increasing, alternately, as they were impell- 
 ed, probably by tides or storms, so that coarser or finer materials 
 were transported and deposited, as the waters were more or less 
 agitated ; for currents must have existed to the last. Could these 
 sedimentary deposits be now all removed, we should see the 
 naked, scarred, and devastated skeleton of the planet, exhibiting 
 the most decisive proof that it had been swept by violence, of 
 which we find evident marks in the scratches and furrows, found 
 in the fixed rocks, that are covered by diluvium. 
 
 If a section of the deepest diluvium could be made quite down 
 to the solid rock, there can be little doubt, that, on the whole, the 
 magnitude of the parts would correspond with the depth, and the 
 larger fragments of these loose materials would often be found 
 at the bottom. This does not render it improbable, that bowl- 
 der stones should be occasionally deposited on the surface, es- 
 pecially when they are found on the firmer materials, or on 
 rocky ledges. 
 
 SUBSIDENCE OF THE PRIMITIVE OCEAN. 
 
 If it was necessary that the diluvial ocean should retire with 
 moderation, it was indispensable that the primitive ocean should 
 
THE DELUGE AND DILUVIAL ACTION. 97 
 
 decline with extreme slowness, in order to give time for the various 
 arrangements of firm materials, which were going on, and for the 
 consolidation of the fragmentary and petrifaction rocks, with 
 their extraneous contents of organized bodies, both vegetable and 
 animal. We have no reason to suppose, that there was any mi- 
 raculous interference to get rid of the water, and indeed the in- 
 numerable marine races, found in the rocks, prove its presence, 
 during the gradual progress of their lives, death, and sepulture. 
 A rapid retreat of the waters would have been entirely inconsis- 
 tent with this state of things; it could have produced no other than 
 the most destructive effects, and, instead of fitting the earth to be- 
 come the abode of living beings, and of man, their lord, would 
 have exhibited only a scene of the most frightful devastation, and 
 a long time must have passed after the event, before it could 
 have become habitable. 
 
 As the waters of the primeval ocean, after the mountains and 
 hills began to be uncovered, would be pent up and forced into 
 sluices and narrow passes, the rapidity and devastating effects of 
 the currents would have been greatly augmented, and for a time 
 progressively so, as the waters descended.* 
 
 * It is obvious, that the retreat of the waters could not, upon physical laws, have 
 been so rapid, as to have been compassed, with safety, to the surface, within three 
 natural days, the period that must be allotted to it by those who understand the ac- 
 count of the time in the common sense ; for two days had passed, before the tops of 
 the mountains appeared, and every thing was finished on the evening of the fifth 
 day, at least, to such an extent, that the ground was dry enough, to be fitted for the 
 reception of man, and of the terrestrial animals, which were created the next day. 
 
 Now the Himmaleh mountains are nearly twenty-six thousand feet high ; proba- 
 bly, they were then considerably higher, perhaps twenty-seven thousand; as every 
 thing on the surface, indicates that the mountains have been much degraded by the 
 wear of time. The drainage of the earth, to have been accomplished in three days, 
 upon the supposition of twenty-seven thousand feet elevation, would have required 
 a descent of three hundred and seventy-five feet in an hour, or nine thousand in 
 twenty-four hours ; or, if these mountains were only twenty-six thousand feet high, 
 the drainage must have been at the rate of more than three hundred and sixty feet 
 in an hour, or over eight thousand six hundred and sixty-six in twenty -four hours, 
 or two thousand one hundred and sixty-six feet in the time of the descent of a com- 
 mon tide. 
 
 13 
 
98 VOLCANOS. 
 
 The difficulty would not be diminished by the supposition that 
 the mountains were elevated from the bottom of the ancient 
 ocean, for, if they rose within the time of a few days, the effects 
 on the waters would have been still more violent ; if they were 
 rising gradually during an indefinitely long period, this supposition 
 concedes the very point in discussion. Every geological theory 
 supposes the mountains to have been in existence, before the 
 earth was habitable, and the Mosaic history necessarily implies 
 the same fact. 
 
 XXX. VOLCANOS.* 
 
 Among the physical phenomena of our planet, none arrest the 
 attention of its inhabitants more forcibly, than those connected 
 with earthquakes and volcanos. These tremendous displays of 
 power cannot fail to interest even barbarous nations, who consid- 
 er volcanic craters as the residence of demons, and their erup- 
 tions as the demonstrations of their anger, and as the means em- 
 ployed by them to spread destruction. The missionaries in 
 Owyhee, (Hawaii,)! have given us a very interesting account of 
 the goddess Pele, and of the highly poetical mythology, which the 
 natives have built upon her supposed dominion. 
 
 It is not surprising, that such terrific appearances should be 
 imputed by barbarians, to the agency of a local deity, and that 
 the visitations of earthquakes and volcanos, should be regarded 
 as malignant and vindictive inflictions. 
 
 Much of the poetical machinery of the Greeks and Romans, 
 was fabricated out of physical -phenomena. The struggles of the 
 Titans, buried beneath the mountains, by the anger of the gods, 
 were assigned by poetry, as the causes of the earthquakes of Ita- 
 ly, and Vulcan and the Cyclops, according to the annals of fa- 
 
 * This introductory notice of volcanos, is taken, principally, from the Am. Journal 
 of Science, Vols. XIII. and XiV. having been prepared by the editor of that, and 
 the author of the present work. 
 
 t See Ellis' Tour, and the analysis of it, Vol. XI. p. 1. of the American Journal, 
 
VOLCANOS. 99 
 
 ble, forged their thunder bolts in the bowels of Etna and of the 
 neighboring Lipari islands. 
 
 But in modern times, since the exact sciences have received 
 so much attention, volcanos have been studied with a philosoph- 
 ical spirit. Sir William Hamilton, Spallanzani, Ordinaire, Bries- 
 lak, Brocchi, Humboldt, Von Buch, Beudant, Mackenzie, Monti- 
 celli, De la Torre, Bory St. Vincent, Webster, Srrope, Daubeny, 
 and others, have given us accurate statements of facts, and have 
 reasoned upon them, with direct reference to the present state of 
 physical science. 
 
 To Mr. Scrope, and Professor Daubeny, we are particularly 
 indebted, for recent and very valuable observations and discus- 
 sions. Mr. Scrope published, in 1 825, his " Considerations on 
 Volcanos," and, more recently, his "Memoir on the Geology of 
 Central France." Professor Daubeny has also very recently pub- 
 lished his " Description of active and extinct Volcanos." 
 
 All these works are of great value, and as they have not been 
 republished in this country, it may not be improper to refer the 
 reader, who may not possess the original works, to very full anal- 
 yses of them, in the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of the 
 American Journal of Science. 
 
 While we entertain and express the highest respect for the au- 
 thors of the works alluded to above, we wish to be understood, 
 to attach the principal value to their precise, methodized, and 
 copious statements of facts ; with most of their conclusions we 
 do, indeed, fully agree, but there are theoretical points in these 
 discussions, which will probably never be settled, and about 
 which there will continue to be a diversity of opinion. 
 
 Definition of a Volcano. 
 
 Professor Daubeny states the following distinction between 
 active and extinct volcanos the former includes all those which 
 have been eruptive at any time since the existence of authentic 
 records the latter, those that have, within the same limits of 
 
100 VOLCANOS. 
 
 time, exhibited no signs of activity, although incontestably of the 
 same origin. 
 
 Thus, although a mountain should not exhibit a crater, and 
 the usual figure and stratification of a volcano, if its materials 
 have "a vitreous aspect and fracture, together with a cellular 
 structure cells generally empty, and elongated in the same di- 
 rection, and, if they have a glazed, internal appearance," there 
 need be no hesitation in pronouncing that the materials are of 
 volcanic origin. 
 
 1 . Extinct Volcanos of France and Germany. 
 
 Much philosophical scepticism formerly existed with respect to 
 extinct volcanos. They were vaguely referred to, but without 
 decisive proof of their real volcanic origin ; and many persons, 
 very imperfectly qualified to judge of such questions, were suffi- 
 ciently inclined to infer the existence of volcanos of former ages, 
 wherever they saw a conical hill, or almost any hill, with a hol- 
 low on its summit, and porous stones, of whatever kind, were re- 
 ferred to a similar origin. It was a very imposing and sublime 
 idea, that volcanic fire, still active in our planet, and still bursting 
 forth, in many places, with destructive energy, had, in ages long 
 past, exerted agencies still more extensive covering provinces 
 with ruins, and operating, even in the bed of the primeval oceans. 
 The speculation seemed, however, to claim quite as much affini- 
 ty with poetical, as with philosophical conceptions, and, it was 
 not till the middle of the last century, that the subject of extinct 
 volcanos began to be investigated with accuracy and skill. 
 
 The much disputed country of Auvergne, Velay, and Viverais, 
 in France, has been often visited, and examined by able geolo- 
 gists, and we believe, that within a few years past, no one of them 
 has left that region, without being convinced that it is of volcanic 
 origin. The celebrated geologist, D'Aubuisson, visited the coun- 
 try in question, with the strongest belief, that he should find this 
 district of Neptunian origin, but he returned a convert to the op- 
 posite opinion ; a change, the more creditable to his candor, and 
 
VOLCANOS. 101 
 
 to the vigor of his mind, because he had before published an able 
 and interesting treatise, to prove that basalt, and especially the 
 basalt of Saxony, was of aqueous formation. 
 
 The volcanic district of France, lies upon the river Rhone, 
 nearly in the angle formed by it with the Mediterranean, and 
 covers an area nearly square, of from forty to fifty leagues in di- 
 ameter. 
 
 We have never visited that country, but the evidence of its 
 volcanic origin, exhibited by Mr. Scrope and Professor Daubeny, 
 confirming, extending, and giving precision to the observations of 
 many previous writers, leaves not the shadow of a doubt, that the 
 tremendous subterraneous agency of fire has covered this fine 
 country with floods of molten rock ; no more doubt, indeed, 
 than that similar events have happened at Vesuvius, Cotopaxi, 
 and jtna. 
 
 With the aid of a fine series of specimens, from this very re- 
 gion ;* with the full descriptions of the authors whom we have 
 just named, and with the noble atlas geological geographical, 
 and picturesque, of Mr. Scrope, illustrating the striking features 
 of this interesting region we feel the fullest conviction, that 
 their conclusions are substantially correct ; and we can easily im- 
 agine, that we see the floods of lava, pouring from the now quiet 
 and cold craters, and that the skies of that part of France were 
 once dimmed by the clouds of volcanic ashes, as those of Italy 
 are at the present day. 
 
 Craters, regularly formed, often entire, sometimes with the thin 
 and scorified edge of the lip in fine preservation, and occasional- 
 ly of vast dimensions ; here, black, rugged and scathed with fire ; 
 there, overgrown with trees, and there, filled with water, forming 
 lakes ; currents of lava, lying where they flowed from the crater, 
 or where they burst from the side or foot of the ruptured moun- 
 tain, extending many miles, and many leagues, traceable directly 
 to their parent mountain, winding along the gorges and the sinu- 
 
 * Furnished to the cabinet of the American Geological Society, by our celebrated 
 geologist, Mr. William Maclure. 
 
102 VOLCANOS. 
 
 osities of the vallies, now and then diverted from their course by 
 rocks, hills, and other obstacles ; sometimes damming up rivers, 
 whose courses they have crossed or obstructed, and thus forming 
 lakes of considerable dimensions; exhibiting all the varieties of 
 lithoid lava, from that which is compact and rock-like, to that 
 which is porous and vesicular in an incipient, or in a prevailing 
 degree ; crowned or mixed with slag, scoriae, pumice, olivine and 
 other exuvia? of known and active volcanos ; displaying frequent- 
 ly a structure, now spherical, ovoidal and concentric ; now pris- 
 matic and columnar, and fronting streams, and bounding valleys, 
 with ranges of columns, equalling or rivalling the regularity of 
 the famous colonnades of Fingal's cave, and the Giant's Cause- 
 way ; these are a few of the most striking features of these coun- 
 tries, which are so affluent in proofs of their igneous origin, that 
 there is nothing needed, but to select carefully and judiciously, 
 those facts which will be the most decisive, especially with re- 
 spect to minds not familiar with such contemplations. 
 
 The volcanos of the Auvergne, &c. are regarded as of differ- 
 ent ages ; some appear to have been active before the formation 
 of the present valleys, and some since ; where the currents of la- 
 va have been cut through, by those causes which formed the 
 present valleys, they are obviously older than the valleys, and 
 where these currents have flowed into valleys, beds of rivers, &c. 
 they are as obviously of a more recent date. 
 
 Although the local geographical names may be supposed to 
 allude to the former character of the country, as Auvergne, 
 (Avernus,) Vallee d'Enfer, &c. still, it is thought that these names 
 convey no allusion to historical events, but rather to the actual 
 appearance of the surface. 
 
 Although the formation of these volcanic regions was anterior 
 to the records of history, it was evidently in the most recent por- 
 tions, posterior to the existence of organized beings, which are 
 fouqd imbedded in the volcanic tufa. 
 
VOLCANOS. 103 
 
 Principal Volcanic Phenomena. 
 
 u They are commonly preceded by earthquakes of different de- 
 grees of intensity and duration, and with loud sounds or detona- 
 tions, resembling the noise of ordnance and musketry, apparently 
 produced by the disengagement of aeriform fluids, and the in- 
 crease of bulk in the fluid rocks ; and their sounds are conveyed 
 through the solid earth, not by means of the air. The atmos- 
 phere, at this time, is remarked to be in a peculiar state of still- 
 ness, attended by a sense of oppression. 
 
 " During this period, also, springs are apt to disappear, so that 
 wells become dry ; and it is known that the extent of this affection 
 is sometimes very considerable. 
 
 " When the eruption first appears, it is generally with sudden 
 and great violence. Explosions, apparently from confined air, 
 take place with loud noises, and succeeding each other with ra- 
 pidity, and often with increasing force ; the vent being, common- 
 ly, the central point or crater of the mountain. And in its at- 
 tempt to escape, this air throws up fragments of rock, which 
 sometimes fall back into the crater, and are again repeatedly 
 projected, together with clouds of aqueous vapor. And as the 
 fragments also are often broken into small pieces, and even into 
 dust, this, uniting to the vapor, or mixing with it, produces dense 
 black clouds, or smoke, often assuming the form of a column of 
 entangled or successively formed clouds. 
 
 " Having arrived at a certain height, this column generally 
 spreads laterally or horizontally, forming, if the air is calm, a 
 shape, resembling that of a pine-tree, or if there be wind, a hori- 
 zontal stream. Out of this cloud proceed lightnings of great 
 vividness, while the falling of the dust, added to the density of 
 the cloud, produces darkness over the surrounding country. The 
 melted rock or lava now boils up in the crater, and is often so 
 thrown up into jets by the extricated air, as to resemble flames ; 
 and at length it either boils over the edge of the crater, so as to 
 run down the mountain, or else finds an issue laterally, by some 
 
104 VOLCANOS. 
 
 crevice, equally flowing down in a stream, which holds its course 
 as circumstances permit, down to the lower grounds. 
 
 " In the night this current is luminous ; but in the day, it is 
 generally obscured by vapors, or loses its light by the cooling and 
 blackening of the surface. There are cases, however, in which 
 no torrent of lava occurs, and where no other rocks than scoriae 
 are erupted. The greatest period of violence is generally over 
 when the lava has flowed for a little while, or this is the crisis of 
 the volcano. But commonly, the explosions of fragments and 
 dust continue for some time, gradually diminishing, till the whole 
 falls into a state of quiescence, and is finally extinguished. Last- 
 ly, it must be noticed, that from the action of the volcano on the 
 atmosphere, clouds are generally formed in it, which produce 
 falls of rain, often causing torrents, or even inundations. 
 
 " The intervals of repose are various, reaching in some cases 
 as far as to many centuries ; so that cultivation and population 
 are renewed, to be dispersed again at some future day. In these 
 intervals of repose, however, it is common for vapors to continue 
 to be produced, either from the craters, or in the course of the 
 currents of lava ; and when these are sulphureous, they deposit 
 sulphur ; and in other cases, from their acid nature, they corrode 
 and decompose the rocks through which they find a vent. What 
 are called solfataras and souffrieres are the result."* 
 
 The display of electrical phenomena during volcanic eruptions 
 is often very brilliant ; Mr. Scrope remarks that this was the fact 
 with the eruption of Vesuvius, in October, 1822. "From every 
 part of the immense cloud of ashes which hung suspended over 
 the mountain, flashes of forked lightning darted continually. 
 They proceeded in greatest numbers from the edges of the cloud. 
 They did not consist, as in the case of a thunderstorm, of a single 
 zigzag streak of light ; but a great many coruscations of this kind 
 appeared suddenly to dart in many directions from a central 
 point." 
 
 * Jour. Roy. Inst. No. 40, p. 356. 
 
VOLCANOS. 105 
 
 Stromboli appears to have been in ceaseless activity for at least 
 twenty centuries, throwing out, not flames nor lava, but scoria?. 
 It is most violent before and during stormy weather, especially in 
 winter, when lava is said to burst occasionally from its side into 
 the sea, heating it to such a degree as to destroy the fish, which 
 are cast on shore ready boiled. 
 
 This volcano is viewed by the fishermen as a weather glass, by 
 which they augur the approach of tempests. 
 
 The volcano in the island of Nicaragua, called, by the sailors, 
 the Devil's Mouth, is said to be constantly active, and this appears 
 to be nearly the case also, with that of Kirauea, in the island of 
 Owyhee, (Hawaii,) but these instances are very rare. 
 
 Many volcanos are in a state of moderate activity, with occa- 
 sional paroxysms. Vesuvius was in this condition from the be- 
 ginning of the present century to October, 1822, when there was 
 a violent eruption. A similar state of things existed from 1767 
 to 1779, when a violent eruption gave vent to the force. 
 
 ^Etna was eruptive with intermediate agitations in 1805-9-11 
 -12 and 19, but both these volcanos have had periods of long re- 
 pose, even for centuries. 
 
 Popocatepetl, in Mexico, has been active ever since the con- 
 quest of Mexico, and that of Sangay in Quito, has been in inces- 
 sant activity for about one hundred years. 
 
 Mr. Scrope mentions as instances of remarkable volcanic par- 
 oxysms, those of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, 203, 472, 512, 685, 993, 
 1036, 1139, 1306, 1631, 1760, 1794 and 1822. 
 
 jEtna, in 1169, 1329, 1535; this latter eruption lasted two 
 years " with terrific violence," and occurred after a quiescence of 
 nearly one hundred years. 
 
 Teneriffe, in 1704, 1797-8. 
 
 San Georgio, one of the Azores, in 1 808. 
 
 Palma, one of the Canaries, in 1558, 1646 and 1777. 
 
 Lanzerote, one of the same group, in 1730. 
 
 Kattlagia Jokul, in Iceland, in 1755, which lasted a year. 
 
 Skaptar Jokuhl, in 1783. 
 
 <*&^?\ 
 
 *4afikS? 
 
106 VOLCANOS. 
 
 Violent eruptions are generally succeeded by periods of long 
 repose, sometimes extending even to centuries. Decomposed 
 lava forms a soil even in the crater, and vegetation springs up. 
 
 " All appearances of igneous action are effaced ; forests grow 
 up and decay, and cultivation is carried on upon a surface, destin- 
 ed, perhaps, to be blown to atoms, and scattered to the winds, 
 when the crisis arrives for the renewal of the volcanic phenome- 
 na. Thus during the quiescent interval, between the eruptions 
 of 11 39 and 1 306, the whole surface of Vesuvius was in cultiva- 
 tion, and pools of water and chesnut groves occupied the sides 
 and bottom of the crater ; as is at present the case with so many 
 of the craters of ^Etna, Auvergne, the Viverais, &c. 
 
 " Terrific eruptions occasionally break out from mountains not 
 previously suspected to be of a volcanic nature, or in which the 
 accounts, of former catastrophes of this sort, existed but as vague 
 traditionary fables." 
 
 One of the most remarkable examples of the explosion of an 
 entire volcanic mountain, happened in 1688, in the island of Ti- 
 mor, one of the Moluccas. 
 
 The whole mountain which was before this continually active, 
 and so high that its light was visible, it is said, three hundred 
 miles off, was blown up and replaced by a concavity now con- 
 taining a lake. 
 
 Theories, suggested anterior to the discovery of Galvanism and 
 the Metals of the fixed Alkalies and Earths. 
 
 It is necessary, to occupy very little time, either in reciting 
 or discussing these obsolete theories. We wish, however, not 
 to treat them, or their authors, with contempt ; for they were, 
 perhaps, the best that the then existing state of science pre- 
 sented. 
 
 " According to the first and most ancient of these, volcanos 
 were attributed to the combustion of certain inflammables, simi- 
 lar to those which exist near the surface of the earth, such, for in- 
 stance, as sulphur, beds of coal, and the like; and, in order to ac- 
 count for the spontaneous inflammation of these substances, an 
 
VOLCANOS. 107 
 
 appeal was often made to an experiment of Lemery, which 
 went to prove, that mixtures of sulphur and iron, sunk in the 
 ground, and exposed to the influence of humidity, would give out 
 sufficient heat to pass gradually into a state of combustion, and 
 to set fire to any bodies that were near." 
 
 Brieslak supposed, that volcanos are produced by petroleum, 
 collected in subterranean caverns, and kindled in some unknown 
 way. Brieslak has shewn, that petroleum is very abundant in the 
 globe ; a conclusion which has been still further extended by the 
 researches of Hon. George Knox.* It appears, that petroleum 
 is found, abundantly, in the vicinity of volcanos, and that it is ex- 
 haled during their eruptions. The uniform presence of sulphur 
 also, in volcanos, and its copious exhalation, during their state of 
 activity, seem to countenance the general idea, that they may 
 arise from the burning of combustibles. 
 
 There are many reasons why this theory, however plausible, 
 appears untenable. 
 
 1. The quantity of any of the ordinary combustibles, which 
 could be supposed to be present in any one place, would be total- 
 ly inadequate to the effect. Reasoning, analogically, from our 
 knowledge of other parts of the world what supply of coal, bitu- 
 men, or sulphur could be adequate to sustain the fires of Vesuvi- 
 us, or of Etna, of Hecla, of Cotopaxi, of Teneriffe, of Sumbawa, 
 or of Kirauea! The most powerful beds of coal, are but a few 
 yards in thickness, and a few miles in extent. A few capital ope- 
 rations of any principal volcano, would soon destroy the greatest 
 existing bed of combustibles, and instead of continuing from age 
 to age, as many of them do, all would soon be exhausted by the 
 intenseness of their own energy, and the consumption of their 
 inadequate magazines of fuel. 
 
 2. There are many volcanic countries, (indeed most are of this 
 description,) where the geological structure and associations are 
 such, as to forbid the existence of coal, the only combustible, suf- 
 ficiently abundant to countenance such a theory. We should 
 
 * (?ee Vol. XII. p. 147, of the American Journal. 
 
108 VOLCANOS. 
 
 look in vain for many active volcanos, in countries of the coal 
 formation, or of the anthracite series. Although volcanic fires, 
 occasionally force a passage through any and every species of for- 
 mation, there is reason to believe that they are deep seated 
 probably even'in the primitive rocks, and in granite itself, where, 
 of course, there is no coal and little sulphur. 
 
 3. When also (in the language of our author,) " we examine 
 more narrowly into the analogies between the effects of volcanic 
 fires, and of those which we know to result from the combustion 
 of either of these materials, we are soon brought to confess the 
 inadequacy of such an hypothesis to account for the facts before 
 us. What resemblance, for example, do the porcelain-jaspers 
 and other pseudo-volcanic rocks, as they are improperly termed, 
 which we observe in coal mines, that have been for centuries in 
 a state of inflammation, bear to the lavas and the ejected masses 
 of a genuine volcano ; or where do we observe from them the 
 same evolution of aeriform fluids, and of streams of melted ma- 
 terials which are so characteristic of the latter ?" 
 
 4. The fermentation of pyrites and the combustion of sulphur 
 and bitumen and coal, do, without doubt produce certain effects, 
 and sometimes those that are considerable ; still these causes are 
 totally inadequate to account for the prodigious extent, incon- 
 ceivable energy, indefinite continuance, and successive reproduc- 
 tion, of volcanic phenomena. 
 
 It is plainly impossible, that such results should take their ori- 
 gin from a few comparatively trifling beds of common combusti- 
 bles, and we must obviously seek for other causes more extensive 
 and more powerful ; and which are not limited in their range, 
 their energy, or their capability of reproduction. 
 
 5. Gny Lussac urged, with much force, against the theory of 
 burning combustibles being the cause of volcanic action, that 
 the atmosphere cannot possibly penetrate to those seats of vol- 
 canic power, when there is brought into action a pressure capa- 
 ble of raising a column of melted lava, three times as heavy as 
 water, to the elevation of one mile or several miles. The objec- 
 tion seems unanswerable, as far as the atmosphere is concerned : 
 
VOLCANOS. 
 
 although we may suppose, that the combustion is sustained by 
 water, provided there are combustibles capable of decomposing 
 that fluid, which would not be the fact, with either of the com- 
 bustibles named, except coal, and that only at the temperature of 
 intense ignition, which must not only be produced, but must also 
 be sustained in some other way, as the affusion of water upon ig- 
 nited coal, unless there is also a copious supply of air, soon puts 
 an end to the combustion. 
 
 Earthquakes, fyc. 
 
 " Some are unwilling to admit earthquakes, as any probable 
 indication of subterranean fire, whilst others not only include 
 them, but go so far as to class hot springs, gaseous exhalations, 
 and the eruptions of mud and petroleum amongst volcanic phe- 
 nomena." 
 
 Do earthquakes and volcanos depend upon the same cause ? 
 On this point, we conceive, that there can scarcely be any ground 
 for hesitation. 
 
 Volcanic eruptions are invariably preceded, and accompanied 
 by earthquakes, and when the volcano discharges its contents, 
 the earthquakes immediately relent, and ultimately cease. It is 
 plain, therefore, that those causes which produce volcanos do 
 also produce earthquakes. But, it will be asked may not earth- 
 quakes be produced by other causes ? To this inquiry we must 
 answer, that we know not of any other causes that are sufficient 
 to produce earthquakes, except those which modern science has 
 assigned as the causes of volcanos, and, as these are, agreeably 
 to the Newtonian rule, " both true and sufficient" we are bound 
 to admit them, at least till other and more probable causes can 
 be suggested. 
 
 " When we observe two volcanic districts, both subject to earth- 
 quakes, which are ascertained to have a connexion with the vol- 
 canic action going on, and find that an intermediate country, in 
 which there are no traces of the operation of fire, is agitated by 
 subterraneous convulsions, similar in kind, but stronger in degree 
 than those which occur in the more immediate vicinity of the 
 
110 VOLCANOS. 
 
 volcanos ; have we not reason to conclude, that the same actiou 
 extends throughout the whole of the above space, and that it is 
 this which produces in the intermediate country the effects allu- 
 ded to, which are only the more alarming from the absence of 
 any natural outlet, from which elastic vapours might escape ? 
 
 "Now in proof of the former of these positions, it may be 
 scarcely necessary to do more than appeal to the case of Etna or 
 Vesuvius, which rarely return to a state of activity, after a long 
 interval of comparative quiescence, without some antecedent 
 earthquake, which ceases so soon as the mountain has establish- 
 ed for itself a vent.* Such was the case before the celebrated 
 eruption of 79 in Campania, and in that of Etna in 1537, where, 
 says Fazzello, noises were heard, and shocks experienced, over 
 the most distant parts of Sicily. In such cases no one would 
 doubt the connexion between the volcano and the earthquake." 
 
 TenerhTe, furnished with the volcanic vent of Teyde, enjoys 
 comparative immunity, while the neighboring islands are dread- 
 fully agitated. If it be objected, that earthquakes are too exten- 
 
 * Humboldt gives us the following series of phenomena, which presented them- 
 selves on the American Hemisphere between the years 1796 and 97, as well as be- 
 tween 1811 and 1812. 
 
 1796. September 27, Eruption in the West India Islands; volcano of Guadaloupe 
 in activity. 
 
 November The volcano of Pasto begins to emit smoke. 
 
 December 14. Destruction of Cumana by earthquake. 
 
 1797. February 4. Destruction of Riobamba by earthquake. 
 1811. January 30. Appearance of Sabrina Island in the Azores. It increases par- 
 ticularly on the 15th of June. 
 
 May Begining of the earthquakes in the Island of St. Vincent, which 
 
 lasted till May, 1812. 
 
 December 16. Beginning of the commotions in the valley of the Missis- 
 sippi and Ohio, which lasted till 1813. 
 
 December Earthquake at Caraccas. 
 
 1812. March 26. Destruction of Caraccas ; earthquakes which continued till 1813. 
 April 30. Eruption of the volcano in St. Vincent's ; and the same day sub- 
 terranean noises at Caraccas, and on the banks of the Apure. 
 
 Pers. Narr. Vol. IV. 
 
 See also Gemellaro on the Meteorological Phenomena of Mount Etna, extracted 
 in the London Journal of Science, Vol. XIV, 1813. 
 
VOLCANOS, 1 1 1 
 
 sive to have their effects attributed to the same cause with volca- 
 nos, we may reply, that volcanic movements generally accompa- 
 ny or succeed them, although it may be in remote countries, and 
 the earthquakes of one country are often connected with those 
 of another. 
 
 To account for the extent to which the vibration of the solid 
 substance of the earth will communicate both shocks and sounds, 
 Mons. Gay Lussac (" Annales de Chimie," &c. Tome xxii, page 
 429,) remarks, that a vibration of the earth is similar to that of 
 the air ; that it is a powerful undulation, produced in the mass 
 of the earth, by some commotion, and that it is propagated, with 
 the same celerity as sound. If we are surprised at the immense 
 extent, to which the shock, the sound, and the ravages of an 
 earthquake are perceived, we may be instructed by considering, 
 that the shock produced by the head of a pin, at one end of a long 
 beam, is distinctly perceived at the other, in consequence of a 
 vibration of all its parts. The movement of a carriage upon the 
 pavements shakes vast buildings, and is communicated through 
 great masses of matter, as in the deep quarries under Paris. M. 
 Gay Lussac inquires, therefore, whether it is astonishing, that 
 a violent commotion, in the bowels of the earth, should cause it 
 to tremble through a radius of many hundred leagues. This 
 philosopher concludes, that earthquakes are the result of the 
 communication of a commotion through the mass of the earth, 
 so independent of subterranean caverns, (which some have sup- 
 posed favorable to the propagation of the sound and motion) that 
 these effects will be propagated the more extensively, the more 
 homogeneous the materials of the earth are. 
 
 Our knowledge of elastic agents justifies us in concluding, that 
 steam and gases, in a word, aeriform agents, as the immediate 
 moving power, are the causes of volcanic eruptions, and of earth- 
 quakes. When evolved rapidly and suddenly, that is, in very 
 great quantities, in a given short time, and endowed by heat with 
 great elastic power, they have, without doubt, sufficient ener- 
 gy to rend mountains, to raise floods of fiery lava to project stones 
 to great heights in the atmosphere to rock alpine ridges, on 
 their foundations, to heave the ocean into unwonted undulations 
 
112 VOLCANOS. 
 
 to shake continents, and the solid globe itself, to its very centre. 
 The effects of gunpowder, of fulminating preparations, and of 
 imprisoned steam, when suddenly liberated, (now so familiar to 
 mankind,) fully justify us in attributing to elastic agents, all that 
 we have done in this statement. 
 
 This subject has been fully illustrated by Mr. Scrope, in his 
 Considerations on Volcanos.* 
 
 Most hot springs have their origin from volcanic action. Ma- 
 ny that are not connected with active volcanic regions arise from 
 basaltic rocks, and their composition is observed to be similar to 
 that of the waters of volcanic districts, especially in their con- 
 taining soda or the mineral alkali. It is possible that some hot 
 springs as, for instance, those of Bath and Bristol, may be de- 
 rived from the fermentation of pyrites, or from other chemical 
 agencies, generating heat, and that the permanency of the tem- 
 perature may arise from the great depth, at which the chemical 
 action, giving origin to the heat is sustained. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Water is a great agent in producing 
 
 Volcanos. 
 
 Mons. Arago enumerates one hundred and sixty-three active 
 volcanos, nearly all of which are situated near to the sea, " in 
 islands and maritime tracts." 
 
 The apparent exceptions are few, and generally when exam- 
 ined, they will not prove to be real. 
 
 If there are, as is stated, but not fully confirmed, one or two 
 volcanos in the centre of Tartary, they may communicate with 
 the lakes of that country, some of which are saline. 
 
 Jorulloi in Mexico, is one hundred and twenty miles from the 
 ocean but Colima, on the Pacific, and Tuxtla on the Atlantic, 
 may be regarded as the wings of a vast subterranean gallery, by 
 which the waters of either ocean, may, ultimately, communicate 
 with Jorullo, and we may presume, that a similar state of things 
 exists with respect to the various mountain groups of Guatimala, 
 Colombia and Chili. 
 
 * See Am. Jour. Vol. XIII, page 108. 
 
VOLCANOS. 1 1 3 
 
 It does not appear to us important to insist, that the commu- 
 nication supposed, should, in every case, be with salt water. It 
 is true, that muriate of soda is frequently sublimed in volcanos, 
 and we may generally attribute this to the proximity of, or at 
 least to a communication with the sea. But those great effects, for 
 which water is necessary in volcanos, depend, not upon the 
 foreign ingredients it may chance to contain, but upon its action 
 in its own proper character, either fluid or aeriform, and upon the 
 agency of its elements. It would, therefore in our view, not 
 operate, seriously, against the reasoning founded upon the sup- 
 posed presence of water, if volcanos should break out, or be dis- 
 covered in the midst of our greatest continents. We are always 
 at liberty to suppose a communication with water, when we have 
 so much evidence of its existence in the bowels of the earth, in 
 caverns, and internal lakes and springs, and rivers, besides the 
 vast stores which we see on the surface. 
 
 As to the extinct volcanos of France and other countries, as 
 neither history nor tradition reaches to the period of their activity, 
 although the evidence of their ancient existence is unquestionable, 
 we may, with good reason, refer their origin, at least, to the peri- 
 od, when the countries in which they are situated, were sub-ma- 
 rine, or, when water existed abundantly, on the surface, in natural 
 hollows, forming lakes and inland seas, more or less extensive.* 
 But, it must be allowed, that water at the bottom of the ocean, 
 existing under an enormous pressure of we know not how many 
 miles of fluid, would be much more prone to reach the seat of ig- 
 neous agency through the natural chinks and fissures, by which the 
 earth is, more or less, intersected, and therefore, this is an addi- 
 tional reason to prove, that the oceanic waters are principally ac- 
 tive in producing volcanos. 
 
 It does not however follow, that the volcano, which is fed by 
 the waters of the ocean, must, of course,, be submarine ; it may 
 break out either through the communication, by which the water 
 
 * This does not exclude the supposition, that some of these volcanos may have 
 continued to be active after the land was uncovered, and after they had thus ceased 
 to be sub-marine. 
 
 15 
 
114 VOLCANOS. 
 
 was admitted, or elsewhere, under the sea or the land, according 
 to circumstances, depending upon the strength, nature, and con- 
 nexions of the superincumbent strata. 
 
 Professor Daubeny founds his explanation of the causes of vol- 
 canos, upon the very interesting discovery of Sir Humphrey Da- 
 vy, " that the solid constituents of our globe all contain some in- 
 flammable principle, and owe their present condition to the union 
 of this principle with oxygen," and he thinks it by no means im- 
 probable, " that at a certain depth, beneath the surface, at which 
 atmospheric air is either wholly or partially excluded, those sub- 
 stances may still exist in their pure unoxidized state." 
 
 As they do not and cannot exist, at the surface of the ground, 
 no analogous phenomena can happen under our observation, 
 and we are, therefore, at liberty to reason strictly with reference 
 to the known action of the subtances in question. 
 
 Water having access to them, would be decomposed, great 
 heat would be generated, sufficient to melt the rocks and the 
 stony matter, formed by the oxidizement of the metalloids ; im- 
 mense quantities of gas and of steam would be thus evolved, and 
 all the mechanical effects so familiar in volcanic eruptions and 
 earthquakes, would occur. 
 
 The composition of the lava of That of Santa Vennera, Pied- 
 Catania, near Etna, asascer- mont, west of Etna, is, 
 tained by Dr. Kennedy, is, 
 
 Silex, 51. 50.75 
 
 Alumina, 19. 18.5 
 
 Lime, 9.5 10. 
 
 Ox. Iron, 14.5 14.25 
 
 Soda, 4. 4. 
 
 Muriatic Acid, 1. 1. 
 
 Prof. Daubeny has reviewed the structure and mineralogical 
 and chemical composition of the volcanic masses, in order to 
 shew the correspondence of facts, with the theoretical views 
 which he has adopted, and it must be allowed, that he has so far 
 made out his case, that there appears to be nothing connected 
 with volcanos, which is materially at variance with the supposi- 
 tion of their origin from metalloids, acted on by water. 
 
VOLCANOS. Ho 
 
 There is good evidence that " volcanos have universally broken 
 out amongst the older formations, or those most near to the nu- 
 cleus, whatever it may be, of the globe." The lavas themselves 
 appear to be the materials of primitive rocks altered by fire, and 
 the accidentally imbedded fragments are portions of primitive 
 rocks. It seems to be irresistibly inferred, that the seat of vol- 
 canic action is deep, because the immense masses ejected from 
 such mountains as Vesuvius and Etna do not exhaust them be- 
 cause the materials are raised to a vast height, as at Teneriffe 
 and Cotopaxi, and because the mountains are not often shatter- 
 ed by the tremendous explosions, which would blow up any su- 
 perficial strata into the air. 
 
 Conclusion. Theory of Volcanos. 
 
 In concluding this account of volcanic phenomena, and of 
 their possible and probable causes, we may be permitted to 
 observe 
 
 That the act of creative energy, admitted alike by religion and 
 philosophy, necessarily implies the production of all the elements 
 of which our physical universe is composed. How far these ele- 
 ments were originally united in binary, ternary, or still more com- 
 plex combinations, we cannot possibly know. The revelation of 
 this fact, not being necessary to our moral direction, has been 
 withheld by the Creator, and we know only that " In the begin- 
 ning God created the heavens and the earth." As to the actual 
 condition of the elements, at that primeval period, science may 
 fairly enquire, and is justified in reasoning within the limits pre- 
 scribed by our moral condition and intellectual powers. 
 
 In the present state of chemical science, our elementary bo- 
 dies are divided, very nearly, between the two classes, combusti- 
 bles and metals, which really form but one class and those agents, 
 which from their acting with peculiar energy upon the com- 
 bustibles and metals, and altering their properties, are called by 
 some, supporters of combustion ; they are oxygen and chlorine, 
 and some add iodine.* 
 
 * There seems to be no reason for mentioning the imaginary body called fluorine. 
 
VOLCANOS. 
 
 If we extend the idea of combustion, as several authors are 
 disposed to do, to other cases of intense chemical action, especial- 
 ly if attended with the extrication of light and heat, we shall in- 
 clude the agency of the combustibles and metals upon each oth- 
 er, as well as upon the proper supporters of combustion. For 
 our present purpose, it is quite immaterial which view is em- 
 braced. 
 
 If we suppose that the first condition of the created elements 
 of our planet, was in a state of freedom ; the globe being a mass 
 of uncombined combustibles and metals, and that the waters, the 
 atmosphere and chlorine, and iodine and perhaps hydrogen were 
 suddenly added ; it will be obvious, from what we know of the 
 properties of these elements, that the reaction, awakening energies 
 before dormant, .would produce a general and intense ignition, 
 and a combustion of the whole surface of the planet. Potassi- 
 um, sodium and phosphorous would first blaze, and would im- 
 mediately communicate the heat necessary to bring on the action 
 between the other metals and combustibles, in relation to the 
 oxygen and chlorine, and in relation to each other. Thus a 
 general conflagration would be the very first step in chemical 
 action. 
 
 In this manner might be formed the fixed alkalies, the earths 
 and stones and rocks, the metallic oxides properly so called 
 the sulphurets and phosphurets of the metals the carburet of 
 iron the acids, including the muriatic, and ultimately the salts, 
 and chlorides, alkaline, earthy and metallic, and many other 
 compounds resulting either from a primary or secondary action. 
 
 In such circumstances, there would also be great commotion 
 steam, vapors and gases would be suddenly evolved in vast 
 quantities, and with explosive violence; the imponderable agents, 
 heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, and attraction, in various 
 forms, would be active in an inconceivable degree, and the re- 
 cently oxidated crust of the earth would be torn with violence, 
 producing fissures and caverns, dislocations and contortions, and 
 obliquity of strata ; and it would every where bear marks of an 
 energy then general, but now only local, and occasional. It is 
 
VOLCANOS. 117 
 
 however obvious, that this intense action would set bounds to 
 itself; and that the chemical combinations would cease, when 
 the crust of incombustible matter thus formed, had become suffi- 
 ciently thick and firm, to protect the metals and combustibles, 
 beneath, from the water and the air, and other active agents. 
 
 As we are not now giving a theory of the earth, but merely 
 stating the conditions of a problem, we forbear to descant up- 
 on many obvious collateral topics, or to pursue the primitive rock 
 formations, through the vicissitudes which might have attended 
 them. We do not even say, that we believe that such events 
 as we have endeavored to describe, did actually happen; we 
 say only that their existence is consistent with the known prop- 
 erties of the chemical elements, and with the physical laws of 
 our planet. Supposing that such was the actual progress of 
 things, it is obvious that the oxidated crust of the globe, would 
 still cover a nucleus consisting of metallic and inflammable mat- 
 ter. Of course, whenever air and water, or saline and acid flu- 
 ids, might chance to penetrate to this internal magazine, the 
 same violent action which we have already supposed to have 
 happened upon the surface, would recur, and the confinement 
 and pressure of the incumbent strata, increasing the effects a 
 thousand fold, would necessarily produce the phenomena of earth- 
 quakes and volcanos. 
 
 Still, it is equally obvious, that every recurrence of such events, 
 must oxidize the earth deeper and deeper, and if the point should 
 ever be attained, when water or air ceased to reach the inflam- 
 mable nucleus, or the nucleus were all oxidized, the phenomena 
 must cease, and every approximation towards this point would 
 render them less frequent. 
 
 Does this correspond with the actual history of these events ? 
 Are they now less frequent, than in the early ages of our plan- 
 et ? The extensive regions, occupied by rocks of acknowledged 
 igneous origin, but where fire is not now active, would seem to 
 favor this idea, but the answer to this question must depend so 
 much upon the theoretical views entertained of the formation of 
 granite, and of the other primitive rocks, that it may be impos- 
 sible, at present, to bring it to a decision. 
 
118 VOLCANOS. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the hypothesis now detailed, may 
 we not suppose, with sufficient probability, that those Voltaic 
 powers which we know to exist whose action we can command, 
 and whose effects, having been first, observed within the memo- 
 ry of the present generation, now fill us with astonishment, arc 
 constantly active in producing the phenomena of earthquakes 
 and volcanos. 
 
 Arrangements of metals and fluids are the common means by 
 which we evolve this wonderful power, in our laboratories ; and 
 it would seem that nothing more than juxta position, in a certain 
 order, is necessary to the effect. Even substances apparently 
 dry and inert, with respect to each other, will produce a perma- 
 nent, and in proportion to the means employed, a powerful ef- 
 fect ; as in the columns of De Luc and Zamboni. It would seem 
 indeed, that metals and fluids are not necessary to the effect. 
 Arrangements of almost any substances that are of different na- 
 tures, will cause the evolution of this power. Whoever has wit- 
 nessed the overwhelming brilliancy and intense energy of the 
 great galvanic combinations, especially of the deflagrator of Dr. 
 Hare, and considers how very trifling, in extent, are our largest 
 combinations of apparatus, compared with those natural arrange- 
 ments of earths, salts, metals and fluids, which we know to exist 
 in the earth, in circumstances similar to those, which, in our 
 laboratories, are effectual in causing this power to appear, will 
 not be slow to believe, that it may be in the earth, perpetually 
 evolved and perpetually renewed ; and now mitigated, suppres- 
 sed or revived, according to circumstances influencing the par- 
 ticular state of things at particular places. 
 
 In our laboratories, we see emanating from this source, intense 
 light, irresistible heat, magnetism in great energy, and above all, 
 a decomposing power, which commands equally all the elements 
 and the proximate principles in all their combinations. 
 
 Sir Humphrey Davy, after discovering that the supporters of 
 combustion and the acids, were all evolved at the positive pole, 
 and the combustibles and metals, and their oxidated products, 
 at the negative proved, that even the firmest rocks and stones 
 could not resist this power, their immediate principles and ele- 
 
VOLCANOS. 119 
 
 ments being separated by its energy. The decomposition of 
 the alkalies, earths, and other metallic oxides being a direct and 
 now familiar effect of Voltaic energy their metals being set at 
 liberty, and being combustible both in air and water elastic 
 agents produced by this power, and rarefied by heat, being also 
 attendant on these decompositions, it would seem that the first 
 principles are fully established by experiment, and that nothing 
 is hypothetical, but the application to the phenomena of earth- 
 quakes and volcanos. 
 
 It appears an important recommendation of the present view, 
 that causes are here provided which admit of indefinite contin- 
 uance, and of unlimited renovation. There appears no reason 
 why, on the whole, the phenomena should cease, as long as the 
 earth exists. It has therefore the great Newtonian requisites of 
 a good theory ; its principles are true, and it is sufficient. 
 
 It has this additional advantage it embraces all that is possi- 
 ble in former theories. Coal, lignite, sulphur and petroleum, 
 and fermenting pyrites, will all conspire with the great opera- 
 tions, at which we have so briefly hinted. Burnt substances will 
 return again to their combustible condition, and combustibles will 
 burn anew, in unlimited succession. Heat, light, electricity, mag- 
 netism, decompositions and recompositions without limit and with- 
 out number, the evolution of elastic fluids in boundless quantities, 
 and all the violent mechanical effects, which their action is known 
 to produce; these are among the known and familiar effects of 
 this power, and all the materials, necessary to render it active, 
 are existing in the earth, on a scale of immense extent. These 
 suggestions might be fortified by many particulars. At present 
 they are thrown out, as leading, although not entirely original 
 thoughts.* 
 
 * The present hypothesis does not exclude the subsequent action of water, in 
 dissolving chemically, or disintegrating mechanically, the crust of the globe. If that 
 which is described in the text, were the first state of the planet as it came from the 
 hand of the Creator, the next step, as we certainly know, was to surround it with 
 water; and then, water, fire, and all the great chemical agents cooperating; all that 
 has been detailed in the preceding sketch would seem to follow, as a natural con- 
 sequence. 
 
120 SUMMARY. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, 
 and established the physical laws,* by which the material world 
 was to be governed. 
 
 2. The earliest condition of the surface of our planet, of which 
 we have any certain knowledge,] was that of a dark abyss of wa- 
 ters, of unknown depth and continuance. 
 
 3. The structure of the crust of the planet affords decisive ev- 
 idence of a series of events, in relation both to the formation of 
 rocks, and to the creation and succession of organized bodies 
 of which many of them contain such astonishing quantities. 
 
 4. Time, and order of time; event; succession and revolution 
 are plainly recorded in the earth ; and no history or tradition 
 contradicts the supposition, that the events involved both time 
 and order of time. 
 
 5. Geology cannot decide on the amount of time, but con- 
 cludes that there was enough to cover all the events connected 
 with the formation of the mineral masses, and with a great many 
 generations of living beings, whose remains are found preserved 
 in the strata. 
 
 6. The deepest rocks the foundations upon which the others 
 repose being mainly crystaline, bearing marks of a chemical 
 origin, and being destitute of fragments, and of organized re- 
 mains, are regarded as the oldest, and are called primitive. 
 
 7. The rocks, called transition, are partly chemical and crys- 
 taline, and partly mechanical, and include remains of plantsj and 
 
 * Beautifully styled in sacred writ, " the ordinances of heaven." 
 
 t We do not exclude the hypothesis of an original action of fire; it is not material 
 
 to decide whether the very first agency, was igneous or aqueous ; it seems certain, 
 
 that they were, very early, coexistent. 
 t Wood and terrestrial plants are found in most rocks, from the old red sandstone 
 
 upwards, and in fact, in the order of rocks immediately beneath, i. e. the transition; 
 
 proving that dry land must have existed, more or less, previous to, or at the time of 
 
 the formation of most of these rocks. We may suppose, therefore, that ponds, lakes 
 
 and rivers, existed also, De La Heche's View. 
 
SUMMARY. 121 
 
 marine animals,* and fragments of the primitive rocks upon 
 which they lie. 
 
 8. The rocks, called secondary, include also chemical depos- 
 its, but less numerous and distinct, and their character is pro- 
 gressively more and more mechanical. 
 
 9. They contain numerous remains of plants and animals, in 
 an entombed, and generally in a mineralized condition. 
 
 10. The organized deposits of the transition and secondary 
 formations, belong to the primitive ocean, and prove that rocks 
 were forming, by mineral laws, at the same time, that plants 
 and animals were called into being, lived and died, and many of 
 them were enclosed in the concreting. rocks. 
 
 11. The existence of a universal primitive ocean is certain, and 
 it was without a shore, till its diminution uncovered the tops of 
 the highest mountains, and successively the lower elevations, and 
 finally, such of the plains and valleys as were then formed. 
 
 12. Its retreat was gradual, and proceeded in such a manner 
 as to be consistent with the due arrangement of the earth's crust 
 and surface, and with the progressive creation, life, death and se- 
 pulture, of animals and plants. 
 
 1 3. Near the period of the earliest transition rocks, we find the 
 beginning of the anthracite coal perhaps a mineral creation 
 but, being associated with distinct impressions and remains of 
 vegetables, and containing even fibrous charcoal,! we cannot 
 deny an intimate connexion between the anthracite and the com- 
 mencement of vegetable life. 
 
 14. The earlier animals are referred to a period not remote 
 from this, and the transition and earlier secondary rocks contain 
 abundance of encrinites, madrepores, molluscous" shell fish, trilo- 
 bites, orthocerae, and other races, chiefly (as far as we know) ex- 
 tinct.}: 
 
 *The terebratulae have continued nearly without interruption, from the transition 
 limestone, to the present time. De La JBeche. 
 
 t Which abounds in the anthracite of Pennsylvania. 
 
 t It cannot be expected, that every minor division of a formation should contain its 
 peculiar fossil, which shall, at the same time, be characteristic of it, at great distan- 
 
 16 
 
1 22 SUMMARY. 
 
 15. The earlier fragmentary rocks, make their appearance 
 soon after the primitive, indicating, that mechanical causes 
 sometimes violent were producing their effects. 
 
 16. It would appear, from the relics of the periods immediate- 
 ly succeeding, that vegetation had increased prodigiously upon the 
 earth, and that there were even trees and forests upon those parts 
 of the surface, that had become sufficiently dry. 
 
 17. Bituminous coal, belonging to the era of the earlier secon- 
 dary, seems now to have been formed, as there is great reason 
 to believe, from submerged and inhumed wood, and other vege- 
 tables, whose vestiges are so numerous in the coal mines. 
 
 1 8. Coal, being peculiarly limited in its local relations, and of- 
 ten contained in basins, it seems probable, that it generally arose 
 from local circumstances, with all its alternating and attendant 
 strata of shales, sandstones, limestones, clays, iron ores, pudding- 
 stones, &c. ; and, as these depositions are often repeated several 
 times, in the same coal basin, and the mines are occasionally 
 worked to a great depth, (even to twelve hundred feet, in some 
 places in England) it is plain that no sudden and transient event, 
 like the delude, could have produced such deposits, although it 
 might bury wood arid trees, which, in the course of time, might 
 approximate to the condition of lignite or bituminized, or par- 
 tially mineralized wood, which is often found under circumstan- 
 ces, indicating a diluvial origin. 
 
 19. We find, in the strata of this period, not only great abun- 
 dance of shells, (bivalves, univalves, &c. ;) but in the later, and 
 sometimes in the middle secondary strata, oviparous animals, in- 
 cluding several gigantic species of crocodiles* and other saurian 
 amphibia. 
 
 ces the general resemblance of the organic remains, contained in the more recent 
 rocks, is a better guide than any fossils, supposed to be characteristic; though the 
 latter become more valuable, as we descend in the series ; the older rocks being 
 much more uniform in their fossil contents, in parts of the world, far distant from 
 each other, than the more modern. De La Heche's View. 
 
 * The crocodile has been continued, perhaps, from the new red sandstone cer- 
 tainly from the lias to the present time and, as its remains often occur in the inter- 
 val, the crocodile appears to have been a tolerably constant inhabitant of our globe. 
 
SUMMARY. 123 
 
 20. In the secondary strata, above the bituminous coal,* we 
 h'nd perfect fish. Nothing can be finer in this way, than the 
 ichthyolites, found in the lias limestone of England, and in 
 the calcareous marl of Mount Bolca, near Verona, in which place, 
 there are stated to be one hundred and five species.t They 
 are numerous, at Beyroot, in Palestine,']: at Sunderland, (Mass.) 
 on Connecticut river, and in many other places. 
 
 21. Birds are very rare in the fossil state. Their habits would 
 expose them, very little, to those accidents, fry which the other 
 organized beings were so abundantly inhumed, for even aquatic 
 birds, have their nests on shore. 
 
 It is, however, remarkable, that in the recent secondary, and 
 the tertiary, we first find remains of birds ; they come in, in the 
 strata, at the time when, we may presume, that the state of the 
 planet admitted of their existence. 
 
 22. The loose materials, that cover the rocks, more or less, in 
 every country, are attributable chiefly to the wearing effects of 
 agents, operating, in all time, to produce disintegration and de- 
 composition. 
 
 23. The primitive ocean appears to have had a greater agency 
 than any other cause, in producing and rounding the bowlder 
 stones and pebbles, and fragmentary materials, whether consoli- 
 dated or loose ; but the diluvial ocean, and the present ocean 
 
 since its first appearance on the surface. The fossil crocodile appears to have been 
 an inhabitant of fresh water, and of rivers, as at present. In the West Indies, the 
 crocodiles frequent muddy, and sometimes brackish ponds, and in shallow water, 
 they often remain for hours, with the tips of their noses out of water. The organi- 
 zation and habits of crocodiles, do not enable them to contend with the agitations of 
 the sea, which they shun. It would seem, however, that the organization of the 
 ichthyosaurus would enable him to swim in the waves. De La Heche's View. 
 
 * Fragments of fish are stated to be found even in earlier strata. De La Beche' 
 View. 
 
 T Thirty-nine species are said to come from the Asiatic seas, three from the Afri- 
 can, eighteen from South America, and eleven from North America but in this dis- 
 tribution, imagination may have had a share, the resemblance being, perhaps, gene- 
 ric, rather than specific. 
 
 t Am. Jour. Vol. X. pa. 28. 
 
124 SUMMARY. 
 
 and seas, and waters, of every kind, including lakes, rivers, and 
 rain and snow floods, and currents, operate in the same man- 
 ner, and in the direct and combined proportion of time and energy 
 of movement. 
 
 24. The actual disposition and arrangement of the loose mate- 
 rials, as we now see them, is to be attributed, chiefly, to the dilu- 
 vial ocean no other cause being capable of reaching the re- 
 gions remote from, and elevated above the present great waters 
 of the globe. 
 
 25. The arrangement of the loose materials, on shores, and in 
 outlets, and in regions occasionally flooded, is, at least to some 
 depth, and to some extent, to be referred to agencies now in op- 
 eration. 
 
 26. Some materials are undergoing consolidation, in the pro- 
 gress of the present times; but, the masses thus produced, are 
 limited and accidental, and are easily known by their loose and 
 porous character, and generally by their want of firmness. They 
 belong, for the greater part, to the tufas the fragments and acci- 
 dentals aggregates, being often cemented by infiltration of carbo- 
 nate of lime, oxide of iron, or other substances ; there is no diffi- 
 culty in distinguishing them from the early formations. 
 
 27. Volcanic deposits obey no law ; they are found wherever 
 subterranean fire has accumulated sufficient power, to force a 
 passage through the incumbent masses, and the lava, in fusion 
 and ignition, flows over every thing, and in every direction, qua 
 data porta. 
 
 28. The trap rocks and many of the porphyries, and the ex- 
 tensive deposits of ancient trachytic rocks, have the same acci- 
 dental position, and occasionally cover any thing, and every thing, 
 from granite to coal, and clay, and gravel, but appear to have 
 abounded most in the earlier periods. 
 
 29. The analogies which favor the opinion of their igneous, but 
 principally sub-marine* and often subterraneous origin, are numer- 
 ous and strong, and the admission of this fact, militates in no degree, 
 against the prevalence and peculiar effects of the primitive ocean. 
 
 * Chiefly under the ancient ocean. 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 30. In the like manner, any rock, for whose ignigenous origin, 
 derived from an examination of its character, contents and posi- 
 tion, there appears sufficient evidence, may be referred to that 
 cause, in perfect consistency with the early and indispensable 
 dominion of water. 
 
 31. Thus the two great theories, that have so long divided ge- 
 ologists, may be made to harmonize, and nothing more remains 
 than the perhaps superfluous task of settling the balance of pow- 
 er between them, and their auxiliaries, namely, pressure and the 
 other modes of mechanical action, and the agency of the impon- 
 derable elements, which are closely connected with heat. 
 
 32. It is not necessary even to exclude the supposition that ig- 
 nition and fusion may have preceded the period when the primitive 
 ocean brooded over the planet, and as there is incontrovertible 
 evidence of the ancient, as well as continued and present preva- 
 lence of internal fire, it is clearly possible, that it might have been 
 in operation, as early as there were any materials upon which 
 it could act.* It seems therefore a matter of little importance, 
 whether the fire was kindled before or after water was poured round 
 the globe. It is certain that they have maintained their separate 
 dominion ever since, although with occasional coalition, and 
 with great vibrations in the balance of power. 
 
 ********** 
 It would appear from a notice in the public journals, that Pro- 
 fessor Leslie considers it as certain, that the density of bodies in- 
 creases as we descend below the surface of the earth, that air at 
 the depth of thirty-three miles and three fourths, would have the 
 density of water, and the density of quicksilver at one hundred 
 and ninety-seven miles, that marble would have its density doubled 
 at two hundred and eigthy seven miles, &c. 
 
 It is inferred that if the globe were solid, that its density would 
 far exceed that of 5. and therefore, it is supposed that the earth 
 must be hollow or cavernous. 
 
 The application of these opinions to some of the views which 
 have been presented in the preceding sketch is obvious; they pro- 
 
 * See the theory of volcanos in this sketch, page 98. 
 
126 CONCLUSION. 
 
 vide for the high specific gravity of the earth, not only in consisten- 
 cy with the existence of caverns ; but caverns (a vast cavern,) are 
 necessary to the theory. The learned author, as is stated, im- 
 agines that these caverns are filled with "concentrated light, 
 which when embodied, constitutes elemental heat or fire," and 
 the elasticity of this light is supposed to prevent the collapse of 
 the walls of the cavity. On the latter very extraordinary sugges- 
 tion, not having seen the author's own statement, we offer no 
 opinion. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 It will be seen, that the only point in which the view, presented in 
 the preceding sketch, differs from the common understanding of 
 the Mosaic account of the creation is, not in the order of the events, 
 but in the amount of time, which they are supposed to have occupi- 
 ed before the creation of man ; every thing since that event, being 
 understood according to the received chronology. In the prefatory 
 remarks I have expressed the opinion, that there is no real incon- 
 sistency between the Mosaic history, and the actual structure of the 
 earth. As I understand the account there is not, but, on the present 
 occasion, I shall not enter upon the discussion of that part of the 
 subject; believing that the period is not distant, when Geology will 
 be admitted into the train of her elder sister Astronomy, and that 
 both, however regarded while they were imperfectly understood, 
 will be eventually hailed, as friends and allies of revealed religion, 
 
 REMARK. 
 
 In giving the limits of the Tertiary, it should have been stated, 
 that it is always newer than the chalk and in England and France, 
 lies upon it. 
 
 O* The " author" referred to without name, in the preceding pages, is Mr. Bake- 
 well, to the 3d Edition of whose Geology this "outline" was added as an appendix. 
 
 NOTE. CORRECTION, p. 56. 
 
 The Megalosaurus is found in limestones and sandstones lying higher than the 
 lias, and the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus are fpund also in many of the strata 
 above, and in some of those below the lias. Comparison with De La Eeche's View. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABYSS, aqueous, 25, 26. 
 Action, diluvial, 77. 
 Aeriform fluids, 69. 
 Agency, igneous, 29. 
 Agents, chemical, 26 ; alluvial, 60. 
 America, North, 5. 
 Analogies, 67. 
 
 Animals, extinct, 90 ; gigantic, 63 ; tes- 
 taceous, 57, 
 
 Arrangement of Diluvial, &c. 124. 
 Avulsions, 19. 
 
 Banks, 19. 
 
 Bible, not a book of physics, 7. 
 
 Birds, rare in rocks, 123. 
 
 Bodies, organic, in transition, 45. 
 
 Bones, in diluvium, &c. 63. 
 
 Boring, 16. 
 
 Bowlders and pebbles, origin of, 123. 
 
 Canals, 17. 
 Catastrophe, 58. 
 
 Coal, anthracite, 121; bituminous, 122. 
 Combustibles, agency of, 107. 
 Conclusion, 126. 
 
 Constitution of rocks, primitive, 25 ; trans- 
 ition, 41 ; secondary, 53. 
 Correction, 126. 
 Creator, final cause, 30. 
 Creation, 7 ; progressive, 50. 
 Crocodiles, ancient, 122. 
 Crust of the earth, 11. 
 Crystalization of primitive rocks, 38. 
 Crystals in do. 38. 
 
 Defiles, 19. 
 
 Deluge, facts not belonging to, 6 ; phys- 
 ical causes, 68 ; characters of, 73 ; phys- 
 ical effects of, 84 ; extinction of races 
 by, 93. 
 
 Derbyshire, peak of, 46. 
 
 Diluvial, 60 ; action, 77. 
 
 Diluvium, mineral, 85 ; animal and ve- 
 getable, 88. 
 
 Disorder of the strata, 23. 
 
 Distinction, tertiary, diluvial, 60. 
 
 Drainage of primitive ocean, 97. 
 
 Earth, order in the, 40; redemption of 
 from water, 40. 
 
 Earthquakes, their cause, 109; connect- 
 ed with volcanic operations, 110. 
 
 Eruptions, volcanic, 105 ; intervals be- 
 tween, 106. 
 
 Extent of geological research, 11. 
 
 Extinct races, 46. 
 
 Extinction of animal races, 93. 
 
 Facts, geology founded on, 5. 
 Fashion in geology, 3. 
 Fire and water, 5 ; internal, 36. 
 Fluids, aeriform, 69. 
 
 Fragmentary rocks of Rhode Island and 
 Boston, 43 ; transition, their position, 44. 
 Fragments in early rocks, 42. 
 Fruits of geological observations, 22. 
 
 Genesis, consistent with geology, 7. 
 
 Geology, object of, 2 ; philosophy of, 3 ; 
 primitive and speculative, 9 ; a science, 
 12; modes of investigating, ibid; its 
 principles simple, 47. 
 
 Gigantic animals, 63. 
 
 Gneiss, 34. 
 
 Granite of Christiania, 32. 
 
 Gravel, 60. 
 
 Harmony of theories, 125. 
 Hot springs, 112. 
 Hypothesis, instances of, 10. 
 
 Ichthyolites of Bolca, 10, 123 ; of English 
 Lias, 123 ; of Sunderland, Mass., 123. 
 Ichthyosaurus, 56. 
 
 Knowledge of the earth, sources and lim- 
 its of, 11. 
 
 Lakes, eruption of in Vermont, 81. 
 
 Landslips, 19. 
 
 Lava, its composition, 114. 
 
 Limits of our geological knowledge, 11. 
 
 Loam, 60. 
 
 Maclure, William, 5. 
 
128 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Magnetism, imaginary cause of, 10. 
 
 Marbles transition, 42. 
 
 Materials of the globe, their solubility, 27. 
 
 Mechanical and chemical effects, 39. 
 
 Megalosaurus, 56. 
 
 Metals in the interior of the earth, 116 ; 
 
 do they prevail in the globe, 15. 
 Mines, greatest depth, 16. 
 Mobility, chemical, 25. 
 Mosaic account of deluge, 74. 
 Mountains, height of at the deluge, 74. 
 
 Name of primitive rocks, 33 ; secondary, 
 
 53 ; transition, 48. 
 
 Notch of White Mountains, slides in, 20. 
 Nucleus of the globe, 14. 
 
 Obliquity of strata, 13. 
 
 Order, general, 22. 
 
 Organized bodies in transition rocks, 45 ; 
 
 secondary, 55. 
 Oysters, beds of, 91. 
 
 Penn, Mr., 75. 
 
 Phenomena, volcanic, 103. 
 
 Plants, less numerous in rocks than an- 
 imals, 56 ; their early origin, 41. 
 
 Plesiosaurus, 56. 
 
 Pororoca of the Amazon, 78. 
 
 Position of transition rocks, 44 ; primitive, 
 31 ; secondary. 51. 
 
 Power, Voltaic agency in volcanos, 119. 
 
 Precipices, 19. 
 
 Preservation of vegetables, 94. 
 
 Primitive rocks, 25. 
 
 Progression in rocks, 51. 
 
 Providence, events at in 1815, 83. 
 
 Pyrites, agency in volcanos, 103. 
 
 Races, extinct, 46. 
 
 Ramsgate, effect of a wave at, 83. 
 
 Redemption of the earth gradual, 49. 
 
 Remains, human, 88 ; animal, petrified, 
 67 ; animal and vegetable, 90. 
 
 Revolution, 65. 
 
 Rivers, 18. 
 
 Roads, 17. 
 
 Rocks, primitive, 25 ; their position, 31 ; 
 contain no organized remains, 31 ; in- 
 clined, 33; epoch of their deposition, 
 35 ; prohable origin, 37 ; transition, 41 ; 
 secondary, 51 ; their position, 51 ; name, 
 53. 
 
 Sand, 60. 
 
 Secondary rocks, 51 ; organized remains 
 in 55. 
 
 Slate, micaceous, 34. 
 
 Slides, 19; in the Alps 20; in the White 
 mountains, 20; in the Green moun- 
 tains, 80. 
 
 Specific gravity of the earth, its possible 
 cause, 15. 
 
 Springs, hot, 112. 
 
 Strata, obliquity of, 13 ; horizontal, 13. 
 
 Stromboli, 105. 
 
 Subsidence of the diluvial ocean, 95 ; of 
 the primitive, 96. 
 
 Summary of Geology, 120. 
 
 Temperature, its effects on solution, 28. 
 
 Tertiary, 60. 
 
 Theories of volcanos 106 115. 
 
 Time, order and progress of, 120. 
 
 Transition rocks, 41 ; character, 41 ; name, 
 
 48. 
 
 Transportation, 59. 
 
 Trap rocks, their possible origin, 29, 36. 
 Trees, in alluvial, 63. 
 Trilobite, (note,) 48. 
 Tunnels, 17. 
 
 Valleys, 19. 
 
 Vegetables, preservation of, 94. 
 
 Vibration, communication of, 111. 
 
 Vibrations, subterranean, 111. 
 
 View, comparative, 75. 
 
 Volcanic power, 71. 
 
 Volcanos, submarine, 29 ; eruption of 105; 
 theories of origin, 106115; general 
 view of, 98 ; definition of, 99 ; writers 
 on, 99; extinct, 100. 
 
 Water, its agency in volcanos, 112 ; its 
 connexion with volcanos, 113. 
 
 Waters, adaptation to different forms of 
 life, 66; their rise, altitude and time, 76. 
 
 Wells, their depth, 16. 
 
 Werner, fashion to decry, 3 ; his proba- 
 ble views, 5. 
 
 Wernerian arrangement, 4. 
 
 Whale, skeleton on mountain, 99. 
 
 Wood, its early origin, 120. 
 
 Wye, tides in the, 79. 
 
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