VESUVIUS. 187 



tainly more active than they are at the present time 

 may, we think, be denied absolutely. 



"When the science of geology was but young, and 

 its professors sought to compress within a few years 

 (at the outside) a series of events which (we now 

 know) must have occupied many centuries, there was 

 room, indeed, for the supposition that modern volcanic 

 eruptions, as compared with ancient outbursts, are but 

 as the efforts of children compared with the work of 

 giants. And accordingly, we find a distinguished 

 French geologist writing, even so late as 1829, that in 

 ancient times " tous les phenomenes geologiques se 

 passaient dans des dimensions centuples de celles 

 qu'ils presentent aujourd'hui." But now we have 

 such certain evidence of the enormous length of the 

 intervals within which volcanic regions assumed their 

 present appearance we have such satisfactory means 

 of determining which of the events occurring within 

 those intervals were or were not contemporary that 

 we are safe from the error of assuming that Nature at 

 a single effort fashioned widely-extended districts just 

 as we now see them. And accordingly, we have the 

 evidence of one of the most distinguished of living 

 geologists, that there is no volcanic mass " of ancient 

 date, distinctly referable to a single eruption, which 

 can even rival in volume the matter poured out from 

 Skaptar Jokul in 1783." 



In the volcanic region of which Vesuvius or Somma 



