258 



EECEEATIYE SCIENCE. 



del Greco was destroyed a second time, the 

 mass of lava amounted to 45,000,000 cubic 

 feet. In 1669 Etna poured forth a flood 

 which covered eighty-four square miles of 

 surface, and measured, nearly 100,000,000 

 cubic feet. On this occasion the sand and 

 ecorise formed the Monte Rossi, near Nicolosi, 

 a cone two miles in circumference, and 450 

 feet high. The stream thrown out by Etna 

 in 1819 was in motion, at the rate of a yard 

 per day, for nine months after the eruption; 

 and it is on record that the lavas of the same 



Vesuvius has thrown its ashes as far as Con- 

 stantinople, Syria, and Egypt ; it hurled 

 stones, eight pounds in weight, to Pompeii, a 

 distance of six mUes ; while similar masses 

 were tossed up 2000 feet above its summit. 

 Cotopaxi has projected a block 109 cubic 

 yards in volume a distance of nine mUes 

 while Sumbawa, in 1815, during the most 

 terrible eruption on record, sent its ashes as 

 far as Java, a distance of 300 miles, while the 

 area affected by the convulsion comprised 

 more than 2000 English square miles of sur- 



M E H r c a/ ^^,„'.^^'^^Z°°ty"'", .. 





■E q ITA T O at 





The Principal Lines of Volcanic and Earthquake Phenomena on the Globe. 



mountain, after a terrible eruption, were not 

 thoroughly cooled and consolidated ten years 

 after the event. In the eruption of Vesuvius, 

 A.D. 79, the scoriae and ashes vomited forth 

 far exceeded the entire bulk of the mountain, 

 while in 1660 Etna disgorged more than 

 twenty times its own mass. For such enor- 

 mous effects correspondingly enormous causes 

 must exist, for which we look in vain to the 

 ashes themselves, or to the construction of 

 the craters from which they are thrown. 



face ; and out of a population of 12,000 souls 

 only twenty-six escaped. 



In viewing these evidences of enormous 

 power, we are forcibly struck with the simi- 

 larity of action with which they have been 

 associated ; and, carrying our investigation a 

 step further, the same similarity of the pro- 

 ducing power is hinted at in the identity of 

 the materials ejected. Thus, if we classify 

 the characteristics of all recorded erup- 

 tions, we shall find that the phenomena are 



