250 COSMOS. 



where covered by channels of communication between the 

 fused interior and the external atmosphere. Gaseous emana- 

 tions, rising from very unequal depths, and therefore conveying 

 substances differing in their chemical nature, imparted greater 

 activity to the plutonic processes of formation and transfor- 

 mation. The sedimentary formations, the deposits of liquid 

 fluids from cold and hot springs, which we daily see producing 

 the travertine strata near Rome and near Hobart Town in 

 Van Diemen's Land, afford but a faint idea of the flotz forma- 

 tion. In our seas, small banks of limestone, almost equal in 

 hardness at some parts to Carrara marble,* 4 are in the course of 

 formation, by gradual precipitation, accumulation, and cementa- 

 tion processes whose mode of action has not been sufficiently 

 well investigated. The Sicilian coast, the Island of Ascension, 

 and King George's Sound in Australia, are instances of this 

 mode of formation. On the coasts of the Antilles, these 

 formations of the present ocean contain articles of pottery, 

 and other objects of human industry, and in Guadaloupe even 

 human skeletons of the Carib tribes.f The negroes of the 

 French colonies designate these formations by the name of 

 Maconne-bon-Dieu.\ A small oolitic bed, formed in Lan- 

 cerote, one of the Canary Islands, and which notwithstanding 

 its recent formation bears a resemblance to Jura limestone, 

 has been recognised as a product of the sea and of tempests. 

 Composite rocks are definite associations of certain orycto- 

 gnostic, simple minerals, as feldspar, mica, solid silex, augite, 

 and nepheline. Rocks, very similar to these, consisting of 



* Darwin, Volcanic, Islands, 1844, pp. 49 and 154. 



} [In most instances the bones are dispersed, but a large slab of rock, 

 in which a considerable portion of the skeleton of a female is imbedded, 

 is preserved in the British Museum. The presence of these bones has 

 been explained by the circumstance of a battle, and the massacre of a 

 tribe of Gallibis by the Caribs, which took place near the spot in w r hich 

 they are found, about 120 years ago ; for as the bodies of the slain 

 were interred on the sea-shore, their skeletons may have been subse- 

 quently covered by sand-drift, which has since consolidated into lime- 

 stone. Dr. Motiltrie, of the Medical College, Charleston, U.S., is, how- 

 ever, of opinion, that these bones did not belong to individuals of the 

 Carib tribe, but of the Peruvian race, or of a tribe possessing a similar 

 craniological development.] Tr. 



J Moreau de Jonnes, Hist. phys. des Antilles, t. i. pp. 136, 138, and 

 543; Humboldt, Relation historique, t. iii. p. 367. 



' .Near Teguiza. Leop. von Buch, Canarische Inseln, s. 301. 



