356 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



This imperfect mode of studying nature might indeed have 

 been obviated by a more attentive examination of the whole 

 Mediterranean, and especially of its eastern islands and littoral 

 districts, where mankind first awoke to intellectual culture and 

 to a higher standard of feeling. Among the Sporades, trachytic 

 rocks have risen from the bottom of the sea, and have formed 

 lands similar to those of the Azores, which in the course of 

 three centuries have appeared periodically at three almost 

 equal intervals of time. Between Epidaurus and Trcezene, 

 near Methone, in the Peloponnesus, there is a Monte Nuovo, 

 described by Strabo and since byDodwell. Its elevation 

 is greater than that of the Monte Nuovo of the Phlegraean 

 fields near Baise, and perhaps even than that of the 

 new volcano of Xorullo, in the plains of Mexico, which I 

 found to be surrounded by many thousand small basaltic 

 cones, upheaved from the earth, and still emitting smoke. 

 It is not only in the basin of the Mediterranean, that volcanic 

 fires escape from the permanent craters of isolated moun- 

 tains having a constant communication with the interior of 

 the earth, as Stromboli, Vesuvius, and Etna ; for at Ischia, and 

 on Mount Epomeus, and also, according to the accounts of the 

 ancients, in the Lelantine plain, near Chalcis, lavas have 

 flowed from fissures which have suddenly opened on the 

 surface of the earth. Besides these phenomena, which fall 

 within historical periods, that is, within the narrow bounds 

 of authentic tradition, and which Hitter purposes collecting 

 and explaining in his masterly work on geography, the 

 shores of the Mediterranean present numerous remains of 

 the earlier action of fire. The south of France exhibits in 

 Auvergne a distinct and peculiar system of volcanos, linearly 

 arranged, trachytic domes alternating with cones of eruption, 

 emitting lava streams in the form of bands. The plains of 

 Lombardy, which are on a level with the sea, and con- 

 stitute the innermost bay of the Adriatic, inclose the tra- 

 chyte of the Euganean Hills, where rise domes of granular 



