742 TRANSACTIONS OP THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



in Guatemala, Dr. Feiichtwanger thinks that a number of such 

 natural phenomena may be able to upset any theory of the forma- 

 tion of the earth, unless based upon the fact that volcanoes form 

 all terrestrial revulsions, and are indisputable evidences of internal 

 heat. We know volcanoes, bothext.net and active, bordering the 

 Pacific from Fuega to the Arctic, through the Aleutian Archi 

 pelago to Asia, down the Asiatic coast through Kamschatka, 

 Japan and the Phillipines, to New Guinea, New Hebrides and 

 New Zealand. In Hawaii the volcanoes are nearly fourteen thou- 

 sand feet high. 



The fact that the' precious metals have been discovered in vol- 

 canic regions, such as Mexico, California, and in all the South 

 American States, and that in California we may travel for many 

 miles over volcanic lavas, obsidian, which is sometimes called vol- 

 canic glass, the direct offspring from volcanoes, must bring to 

 mind the relationship of gold. It was believed that marine shells 

 and fossils were the effects and proofs of a general deluge, and 

 must therefore have been deposited under water. By a fossil is 

 meant any body, or the traces of one, whether animal or vegeta- 

 ble, which has been buried in the earth by natural causes. The 

 remains of animals, particularly those of aquatic origin, are found 

 almost everywhere imbedded in stratified rocks, and sometimes, 

 as in limestone; they form the entire mass of deposits, like the 

 encrinitic rocks, of Medina limestone, N. Y. State, and the depo- 

 sits of tripoli, and fossil shells, of forms which now abound in 

 the sea, are met with far inland, both near the surface, and also at 

 a o-reat depth below and at all heights above the level of the 

 ocean, at an elevation of nine thousand feet in the Alps, at 

 thirteen thousand feet in the Andes, and i^bove sixteen thousand 

 feet in the Himalayas; and, according to Dr. Stevens, fossil shells 

 have been found in North Carolina filled with pure gold. All 

 this proves that the earth has undergone many great revolutions, 

 and that both the volcanic and Neptunian actions have produced 

 jointly the results which daily come under our observation, and 

 other powerful agents, such as earthquakes, glacier currents, and 

 other dynamical powers, have brought about the present state. 

 The earthquakes, which are mostly the forerunners of great vol- 

 canic eruptions, and which often extend over vast areas of land, 

 have been proved to be connected with the heat from the interior 

 of the earth, and Sir "VTilliam Herschcl imagined that the ele- 

 mentary matter of the earth must have been in a gaseous state, 



