58 J, If. J add — On Volcanos, 



spontaneous combustion taking place in beds of pj'ritous brown coal. 

 It is of course unnecessary to point out the utter futility of such, a 

 mode of explanation; nothing, indeed, but the most desperate 

 determination to escape, at all hazards, from the admission of any- 

 thing like volcanic action, could have led to its being entertained 

 even for one moment. 



In the midst of the controversies of which the Kammerbiihl had 

 thus become the centre, it is to the illustrious Goethe, whose 

 philosophic mind so successfully grappled with some of the most 

 difficult problems of comparative anatomy, botany, and other sciences, 

 that geologists are indebted for an able and indejDendent examination 

 of the whole question. 



In 1809, and again in 1820, Goethe visited the Kammerbiihl, and 

 the result of his studies, as given both in Leonhard's Taschenbuch 

 and the " Morphologie," was to place its true volcanic character 

 beyond question. Subsequent writers on the subject, the list of 

 which includes the names of Heinrich and Bernhard Cotta, Goldfuss, 

 Bischof, Berzelius, Ehrenberg, Leonhard, Koggerath, Sternberg, A. 

 E. Eeuss, and Jokely, have fully confirmed the correctness of the 

 views maintained by Goethe. 



But the most interesting part of the great German poet's con- 

 tribution to this subject is that in which he suggested a simple 

 means for removing once for all the doubts concerning the true 

 origin of the Kammerbiihl, and at the same time of applying to the 

 AVernerian doctrines an infallible test. He showed that if, as " the 

 Yulcanists " maintained, the basalt of the Kammerbiihl came from 

 helow, a consolidated duct of the same material would probably be 

 found in the midst of the cinder cone ; and he suggested that mining 

 operations should be carried on in the hill to confirm or disprove the 

 presence of such a central core of basalt. 



In 1834 the Count Caspar von Sternberg, whose contributions to 

 fossil botany are so well known to geologists, determined to carry 

 out the poet's suggestions. Already shafts and galleries had been 

 sunk, in and around the Kammerbiihl, with a view to the discovery 

 of beds of brown coal. One such gallery is said to have been carried 

 in 1776 to the distance of 360 feet; but of the details of these early 

 explorations we have only very imperfect accounts. In 1820 Count 

 Sternberg had himself caused a shaft 27 feet deep to be sunk in the 

 midst of the Zwergeloch ; and Heinrich Cotta had in 1826 put 

 down two j)its at the summit and base of the hill respectively, with 

 a view to more fully determining the materials of which it is 

 composed. 



Count Sternberg's experimental works at the Kammerbiihl con- 

 sisted of a shaft on the south-west side of the hill carried down to 

 the depth of 60 feet, and a number of galleries which were driven 

 both from the bottom of the shaft and from the surface into the verj-- 

 heart of the hill. These old workings are now nearly filled with 

 water, but the entrance to them is ornamented by a stone archwa}^ 

 bearing the following inscription : " Den Naturfreunden gewidmet 

 vom Grafen Caspar Sternberg, 1837." The result of these works 



