Actions of Volcanoes. ~ 279 
the limestone of this ridge was formed. Should this have been 
the case, the absence of the marine alluvium from the higher 
parts, would be accounted for, on the same principles which 
are applied to the denudations of the earth’s surface all over the 
world. 
Though these phenomena should be quite partial, and if they 
do not, therefore, possess so high an interest in reality, as the 
great elevations of the continents, and of the enormous mountain 
chains of America or Asia, they are of a much more impressive 
character, from the. greater facility with which we associate the 
causes and the effects, and from the more palpable and tangible 
nature of the phenomena; from the actual association of an 
active existing cause, with effects that cannot be questioned. 
The others, we look coldly at, through the lapse of ages incalcu- 
lably distant; so distant that they excite in us no personal 
interest, and so much less obvious also, that we feel rather 
inclined to doubt, than to admit of conclusions which are ate 
tended by consequences somewhat revolting to our narrow ex- 
perience. In contemplating the others we feel the insecurity of 
the earth on which we stand, and in every earthquake recollect 
that what once arose, may again be consigned to the bottom 
of the ocean. 
Before concluding this subject, it is necessary to remind the 
reader of one collateral circumstance, which is not only interest- 
ing in itself, but which strongly confirms those views of the 
cause of those appearances which I have here held out. That is, 
the suddenness or rapidity of the action which produced these 
important events. This might be concluded from the undis- 
turbed state of some of the shells and skeletons already men- 
tioned; but it is still more strongly proved by the preservation of 
the animal matter in the ligaments of the bi-valves, and by the 
condition of the fishes of Monte Bolca already mentioned. A 
noted specimen, now in the collection at Paris, and once apper- 
taining to Count Gazzola, evinces in a singular manner the 
rapidity of the catastrophe by which these changes were effected ; 
since, in it, one fish appears to have been arrested in the act of 
swallowing another. 
