§6 Notice of Active and Extinct Volcanos. 



have submerged, tracts of country ; and if we consider, that co- 

 ral reefs are mostly founded on shoals caused by volcanic matter 

 that has been thrown up, a sort of consistency will appear in this 

 instance to exist in the arrangements of nature, which leads to 

 the belief, that fire and water are both working together to a 

 common end, and that end, the preparation of a larger portion of 

 the earth's surface for the reception of the higher classes of an- 

 imals. 



" There may be something fanciful in what I am now going to 

 suggest, with regard to another end which volcanos may be con- 

 jectured to fulfil ; yet if there be any truth in the idea, that the 

 pressure of the ocean would be constantly forcing a certain por- 

 tion of its waters through fissures into the interior of the earth, it 

 would seem that there ought to be some compensating process, 

 hy which the ratio between the sea and land might be preserved 

 unaltered. 



" This would perhaps be afforded by the action of volcanos, 

 which restores to the surface just as much water as has been ad- 

 mitted to the spots at which the process is going on ; for though 

 the first effect of the action is to decompose that fluid into its con- 

 stituents, yet the immediate consequence is, as we have seen, the 

 disengagement of a large volume of sulphuretted hydrogen and 

 sulphurous acid gases ; so that by the action either of the latter 

 fluid,«or of atmospheric air upon the former, the whole of the hy- 

 drogen of the water, sooner or later, becomes re-united with oxy- 

 gen. This indeed is one cause of the quantity of steam given out 

 from the craters of all burning mountains. 



" The products of the volcanic action also, though, from the 

 individual mischief they occasion, they can hardly be viewed by 

 the inhabitants of the country overspread by them in any other 

 light, than as serious present calamities, do not nevertheless de- 

 serve to be considered as permanent or unmixed evils. 



" It is true, that there is something gloomy and depressing in 

 the contemplation of a volcanic mountain, when we consider the 

 cities it has overwhelmed, the fields it has reduced to desolation. 

 " Yet if we do not adopt the notion once so prevalent with re- 

 spect to the speedy dissolution of the globe, if we take up the 

 more pleasing, as well as, I conceive, the more probable opinion, 

 that a world, which required so many ages to prepare it for the 

 accommodation of its present inhabitants, is destined for many 

 ages more to afford them a suitable abode ; there is then some- 

 thing consolatory in the reflection, that the very lava, which for 

 so long a period has spread the most hopeless sterility over the 

 ground it traverses, in process of time crumbles into the richest 

 of soils ; and that, if we take the case of the neighborhood of 

 Naples as the volcanic district with which we are best acquaint- 



