54 On the crystallized Bodies co7itained hi Lava. 



This is shown by the new mouths which are so frequently 

 opened in their sides and at their bases. 



That the water of the sea is ;;bs(jlulelv necessary, from the 

 salts it holds in solution, for exciting those fermentations 

 which produce volcanoes. 



That al! the substances and the strata which compose the 

 calcareous, schistous and granitic mountains, and all their 

 varieties; the sandy gypsose and argillaceous mounts are 

 the work of water, and fire has never approached them. 



That all tha old volcanoes, which are in the middle of the 

 earth, have burned under the water of the sea. The schists 

 and granites, which are seen around some of them, are fo- 

 reign to them; they are strata through which their eruptions 

 have forced a passage, and which remain exposed to view. 



They would have been buried under volcanic matters never 

 to appear again, if these volcanoes had been longer in acti- 

 vity. Those which were burning at the moment when the 

 sea retired from above our continent, ceased to burn at that 

 period ; — an epoch now beyond the memory of the inhabi- 

 tants of any countrv, because none existed upon the soil sur- 

 rounding these volcaeoes, which was then below the sea. 



Among the numerous facts which prove this truth, count 

 Marzari of Vicenza furnished me with a very remarkable one 

 upon his return from a journey he made in Auvergne. At 

 Santourgue there was found a stratification of volcanic sand 

 of about six inches in thickness, between two calcareous 

 strata. It has therefore happened that, after a first calcareous 

 deposit upon the flanks or the base of the volcano, an erup- 

 tion has brt)ken out and extended this sand, upon which a 

 new calcareous deposit has been formed, — operations which 

 could lake place in the sea only. Count Marzari had the 

 goodness to give me a specimen of this sand, which is similar 

 to that which was thrown out from the upper mouth of 

 Etna ui the eruption of 1/63, which I have before men- 

 tioned. 



1 shall here repeat what I have often said : That it is ne- 

 cessary, in order to distinguish the different epochs at v/hich 

 volcanoes have burned, and in order not to confound them, 



to 



