174- COSMOS. 



in Calabria. A still more remarkable and complicated phe- 

 nomenon is the discovery of utensils belonging to one 

 house in the ruins of another at a great distance ; a cir- 

 cumstance which has given rise to law-suits. Is it, as the 

 natives believe, a sinking followed by an eruption ? or, 

 notwithstanding the distance, a mere projection ? As, 

 in nature, everything is repeated when similar conditions 

 again occur, we must, by not concealing even what is still 

 imperfectly observed, call the attention of future observers 

 to special phenomena. 



According to my observations it must not be forgotten that 

 besides the commotion of solid parts as earth-waves, very dif- 

 ferent forces, as for instance physical forces, emanations of 

 gas and vapour, also assist in most cases in the production of 

 fissures. When in the undulatory movement the extreme 

 limit of the elasticity of matter set in motion (according to 

 the difference of the rocks or the looser strata) is exceeded 

 and separation takes place, tense elastic fluid may break out 

 through the fissures, bringing substances of various kinds 

 from the interior to the surface and giving rise again by their 

 eruption to translatory movements. Amongst these pheno- 

 mena, which only accompany the primitive commotion (the 

 earthquake) are the elevation of the undoubtedly wandering 

 cone of the Moya, and probably also the transportation of 

 objects upon the surface of the earth. 20 When large clefts 

 are formed, and these only close again at their upper parts, 

 the production of permanent subterranean cavities may not 

 only become the cause of new earthquakes, as, according to 

 Boussingault's supposition, imperfectly supported masses be- 

 come detached in course of time and fall, producing commo- 

 tions, but we may also imagine it possible that the circles of 

 commotion are enlarged thereby, and that in the new earth- 

 quake, the clefts opened in the previous one enable elastic 

 fluids to act in places to which they could not otherwise have 

 obtained access. It is therefore an accompanying pheno- 



20 Cosmos, vol. i, p. 201, Bohn's edition. Hopkins has very correctly 

 shown theoretically that the fissures produced by earthquakes are very 

 instructive as regards the formation of veins and the phenomenon of 

 dislocation, the more recent vein displacing the older formations. But 

 long before Phillips (in his " Theorie der Gange," 1791), Werner 

 snowed the comparative ages of the displacing penetrating vein and oi 

 the disrupted penetrated rock (see Brit. Assoc. Report, 1847, p. 62). 



