prevalent Disorders, fyc, with Volcanic Emanations. 443 



because comets have appeared in years famous for earthquakes, 

 therefore those earthquakes were caused by those comets.* 

 Leaving them and Mr. Olmsted to ride their comets through 

 the heaven of invention, we may more safely trust ourselves 

 to a volcanic steam-carriage, from which, if we be ejected, we 

 have not far to fall ; and, unlike Phaethon, who fell through a 

 distance equal at least to the tail of the Olmstedian Pegasus, 

 we must, after all, light upon terra Jirma. 



I would by no means presume so far as to think that I must 

 be right, because I think Mr. Olmsted is wrong : but I would 

 appeal to the coincident and correspondent phenomena which 

 I have quoted already, and to the many well-attested facts of 

 the same kind not yet quoted, which I reserve for publication, if 

 I live long enough to prepare my <f rudis indigestaque moles " 

 for the press, in the shape of tables of all natural phenomena 

 from the beginning of history to the present era ; and I ask, con- 

 fidently, whether, when meteors have been known to emanate 

 from the earth during its convulsions, and to appear in the 

 air at a corresponding period ; and when it has been demon- 

 strated, as clearly as evidence can demonstrate, that all natural 

 phenomena of the kind may be referred, indirectly or directly, 

 immediately or inductively, to derangements of the terrestrial 

 organism; and that no circumstance of electrical agency or 

 electrical production has been found not capable of being 

 proved to be, at some period or another, actually coincident 

 and contemporaneous with volcanic convulsions ; it be not a 

 more natural and reasonable hypothesis to assume the volcanic 

 origin of these occurrences, than to take second causes for first 

 causes, or to soar up on the wings of absolute conjecture to 

 the third heaven of the cometic paradise, where I confess my- 

 self too much of a geologic Sadducee to wish to enter. 



If Mr. Espy's theory be correct as to the manufacture of 

 meteors, provided he can produce a vortex, I will engage that 

 he shall be supplied with materials for his use, and vor- 

 tices in abundance, so long as Vesuvius, Etna, Hecla, the 

 Andes, &c. &c, and the earthquake foci, continue to rarefy 

 the lower strata, as they must invariably, whenever Enceladus 

 under Sicily, or Peli under Owhyhee, or any other volcanic 

 spirit or deity, kindles the subterranean fire ; or whenever 

 Neptune passes an hour in the boudoir of Terra, a notion 

 equally poetical, but, perhaps, more scientific, than the other 

 theories of the mythological geology. 



As this paper will conclude my observations on meteors, I 



* See refutation of this notion, in Edin. Rev., No. cxxiii., April, 1835 

 vol. lxi. p. 82. 



