Biography of Baron Leopold von Buck. 375 



Italy" (Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen durch 

 Deutschland und Italien), 1802-1809. 



Two full years— from 1806 to 1808 — were passed by him 

 in Scandinavia, where he found, to his extreme surprise, that 

 granite, which had hitherto, in conformity with the views of 

 Werner, been regarded as indubitably a primary rock, was to 

 be met with betwixt younger formations. He was the first 

 to ascertain the fact that the whole continental part of Sweden 

 is undergoing a continuous but very slow upheaval. On his 

 return home he passed through Lapland (" Travels through 

 Norway and Lapland," — Reise durch Norwegen, &c, 1810). 



In company with the Norwegian botanist Smith, who after- 

 wards met his death in the unlucky English expedition to 

 Congo, he made arrangements in England, which he had 

 embraced this opportunity of visiting, for a voyage of disco- 

 very to the Canary Islands. In April 1815 the two naturalists 

 landed in Madeira, and Buch was not long in recognising an 

 axiom of the utmost weight for the theory of volcanoes, 

 namely, that as the whole Canary Islands are collectively the 

 work of a volcanic action on its grandest scale, so the other 

 islands of the ocean had a similar origin, and the groups of 

 islands of the South Sea are the remains of a pre-existing 

 continent. The volcanoes on the earth's surface are for the 

 most part collected in series that frequently stand in certain 

 relations to each other, and result from immense fissures 

 through which subterranean forces effected a passage for 

 themselves. These fissures follow the direction of promon- 

 tories. The Lipari Islands, Etna, Iceland, the Azores, the 

 Canaries, are to be regarded as central volcanoes. The con- 

 tradistinction of craters of elevation and craters of eruption, 

 which afforded a peculiar explanation of very interesting vol- 

 canic phenomena, met with determined opposition, and one 

 of the strongest opponents was Buch's own principal scholar 

 — whose early death was a severe loss to science — the justly 

 regretted Hofmann, who, in the course of his travels through 

 Sicily, had the good fortune, when at Sciacca, to be able to 

 observe the origin of a small volcanic island. The " Physical 

 Description of the Canary Islands" (Physische Beschreibung 

 der Canariochen Inseln), has now become exceedingly rare. 



