DOMAIN XII. VOLCANIC. 



houses would be foreign to his emphatic 

 and alarming description. Auvergne alone 

 has indeed convinced every Neptunist, who 

 has visited that interesting country, that 

 volcanoes may become extinct ; and rnay^ 

 perhaps, again surprise the unbeliever w r ith 

 ^n unexpected appearance. The wonder- 

 ful volcano of Jorullo, in New Spain, burst 

 out about half a century ago, in the midst 

 of a fertile and luxuriant plain ; but, as 

 has been observed, in the precise line of 

 direction of the other volcanoes in that 

 country ; whence it has been argued, that 

 Chasms, there is a chasm, at an amazing depth, 

 filled with subterranean water and combus- 

 tible materials. For the American vol- 

 canoes are generally very distant from the 

 sea*, and their eruptions of mud can only 

 be imputed to subterranean waters, often 

 very extensive ; as is observed from digging 

 wells in the north of Italy, near twenty 

 miles around Modena, where, on arriving 



* Even those of the Andes are from eighty to one hundred miles j 

 so that a late writer is much mistaken when he supposes them near 

 the ocean, and influenced by sea-water instead of subterranean 

 lakes. 



