390 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST, [DeC. 



the world. From the plateau of central Asia, throughout their 

 westward migration to the pillars of Hercules, the Indo-European 

 nations were familiar with the volcano and the earthquake ; and 

 that the Semitic race were not strangers to the same phenomena, 

 the whole poetic imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures bears ample 

 evidence. In the language of their writers, the mountains are 

 molten, they quake and fall down at the presence of the Deity, 

 when the melting fire burneth. The fury of his wrath is poured 

 forth like fire ; he toucheth the hills, and they smoke, while fire 

 and sulphur come down to destroy the doomed cities of the plain, 

 whose foundation is a molten flood. Not less does the poetry and 

 the mythology of Greece and of Rome bear the impress of the 

 nether realm of fire in which the volcano and the earthquake have 

 their seat, and their influence is conspicuous throughout the 

 imaginative literature and the religious systems of the Indo- 

 European nations, whose contact with these terrible manifestations 

 of unseen forces beyond their foresight or control, could not fail to 

 act strongly on their moral and intellectual development, which 

 would have doubtless presented very difi'erent phases had the early 

 home of these races been the Australian or the eastern side of the 

 American continent, where volcanoes are unknown, and the earth- 

 quake is scarcely felt.* 



Besides the great region just indicated, must be mentioned that 

 of our own Pacific slope, from Fuegia to Aliaska, from whence 

 along the eastern shore of Asia, a line of volcanic activity extends 

 to the terrible burning mountains of the Indian archipelago. 

 Volcanic islands are widely scattered over the Pacific basin, and 

 volcanoes burn amidst the thick-ribbed ice of the Antartic conti- 

 nent. The Atlantic area is in like manner marked by volcanic 

 islands from Jan Mayen and Iceland, to the Canaries, the Azores, 

 and the Caribbean islands,and southward to Ascension. St. Helena, 

 and Tristan dL4.cunha. 



'Compare the fine lines of Pope, in the Essay on Man, where, of 

 superstition, the poet says : 



" She, 'mid the lightning's glare, the thunder's sound, 

 While rocked the earthquake, and while rolled the ground, 

 She taught the proud to bend, the weak to pray — 

 To Powers auseen and mightier far than they, 

 She, 'mid the rending earth and bursting skies, 

 Saw gods descend and fiends infernal rise ; 

 Here fixed the baleful, there the blest abodes — 

 Tear made her devils and weak hope her gods." 



