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dered as the mouths of an immense apparatus 

 of distillation, the lower part of which is placed 

 below the level of the ocean. Since the time 

 that volcanoes have been carefully studied, and 

 that the love of the marvellous has been less 

 observed in works on geology, very well founded 

 doubts have been raised respecting these direct 

 and constant communications between the wa- 

 ters of the sea, and the focus of the volcanic 

 fire *. We may find a very simple explanation 

 of a phenomenon, that has in it nothing very 

 surprising. The Peak is covered with snow dur- 

 ing part of the year ; we ourselves found it still 

 so in the plain of Rambleta. Messrs. O'Donnel 

 and Armstrong discovered in 1806 a very abun- 

 dant spring in the Mai pays, a hundred toises 

 above the cavern of ice, which is perhaps fed 

 partly by this spring. Every thing, consequent- 

 ly, leads us to presume, that the Peak of Tene- 

 riflfe, like the volcanoes of the Andes, and those 



* This question has been examined with much sagacity by 

 Mr. Breislak, in his Introduzzione alia Geologia, t.ii, p. 302, 

 323, 347. Cotopaxi and Popocatepetl, which I have seen 

 ejecting smoke and ashes, in 1804, are farther from the 

 South Sea and the Gulf of the Antilles, than Grenoble is 

 from the Mediterranean, and Orleans from the Atlantic. We 

 must not consider the fact as merely accidental, that we have 

 not yet discovered an active volcano more than 40 leagues 

 distant from the ocean ; but I consider the hypothesis, that 

 the waters of the sea are absorbed, distilled, and decomposed 

 by volcanoes, as very doubtful. 



