DOMAIN XII. VOLCANIC. 



these wonderful efforts of nature to a few 

 beds of coal ! But coal or bitumen would 

 easily be traced in the currents of lava, 

 while no such appearance has ever struck 

 the most attentive and rigid observers ; and 

 a large bed of coal, near Dysert, has been 

 on fire since the days of Buchanan, the 

 poet, without even the mockery of a vol- 

 cano. An idea, which tends to degrade 

 the power and magnificence of nature, can 

 never be true ; and, when we seriously re- 

 flect on the daily circumvolution of this 

 planet, it is impossible to find a greater 

 miracle. In complicated scenes there must 

 be complicated causes ; but does not the 

 grand exhibition of volcanoes arise from 

 natural gunpowder?* 



* The common subterranean noise of Cotopacsi, may be heard at 

 i distance of the space between Vesuvius and Dijon, in Burgundy, 

 iccording to Humboldt : and Bouguen, p. Ixvi, informs us that the 

 iame volcano has thrown stones, of 8 or 9 feet in diameter, to the 

 Jistance of 9 miles. 



Werner seems not to have formed the most distant idea of a vol- 

 :ano ; and his pseudo-volcanoes are much beneath even that name, 

 laving scarcely a faint resemblance of a volcano. 



According to Brochant, ii. 633, one eruption of Etna covered a 

 pace of more than 50 leagues in circuit, with a bed of volcanic sand 

 2 feet thick. 



