ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 119 



nental climate a winter cold, on single days, of 28. 4 and 30. 6 

 Reaumur ( 32 and 37 Fahr.), followed by mean summer tem- 

 peratures of 16.8 and 17.5 Reaumur (69 and 71.4 Fahr.). 



( 19 ) p. 31. "As if America had emerged later from the chaotic 



watery covering" 



An acute inquirer into nature, Benjamin Smith Barton, said long 

 since with great truth (Fragments of the Natural History of Penn- 

 sylvania, p. i. p. 4), " I cannot but deem it a puerile supposition, 

 unsupported by the evidence of nature, that a great part of America 

 has probably later emerged from the bosom of the ocean than the 

 other continents/ 7 The same subject was touched on by myself in 

 a memoir on the primitive nations of America (Neue Berlinische 

 Monatschrift, bd. xv. 1806, s. 190). "Writers generally and 

 justly praised have repeated but too often that America is in every 

 sense of the word a New Continent. Her luxuriance of vegetation, 

 the abundant waters of her enormous rivers, the unrepose of her 

 powerful volcanoes, all (say they) proclaim that the still trembling 

 earth, from the face of which the waters have not yet dried off, is 

 here nearer to the chaotic primordial state than in the Old Continent. 

 Such ideas appeared to me, long before I commenced my travels, 

 alike unphilosophical and contrary to generally acknowledged phy- 

 sical laws. Fantastic images of terrestrial youth, and unrepose 

 associated on the one hand- and on the other, those of increasing 

 dryness, and inertia in maturer age could only have presented 

 themselves to minds more inclined to draw ingenious or striking 

 contrasts between the two hemispheres, than to strive to comprehend, 

 in one general view, the construction of the entire globe. Are we 

 to regard the south of Italy as more modern than its northern por- 

 tions, because the former is almost incessantly disquieted by earth- 

 quakes and volcanic eruptions? Besides, what small phenomena 

 are the volcanoes and earthquakes of the present day, in comparison 

 with those revolutions of nature which the geologist must suppose to 

 have accompanied, in the chaotic state of the earth, the elevation, 

 solidification, disruptions, and cleavings of the mountain masses? 

 Diversity of causes must produce diversity in the operations of natural 

 forces, in countries remote as well as near. Perhaps the volcanoes 



