Dr Daubeiiy on the Volcanoes Auvergne. B61 
vincing proof, that the' strata in which they rest have experien- 
ced no important alteration since the period at which the lava 
was ejected. 
Nor are the two classes of rocks less distinguished in their 
external characters than in their position. The modern, or^^ more 
correctly speaking, the post-diluvian lavas^ are more cellular^ 
have a harsher feel, and more of a semi- vitreous aspect ; their 
surface presenting a series of minute elevations and depressions, 
and the scanty portion of soil which covers them affording but 
little pasturage, and that generally of the worst description. 
In shoFrt, when We traverse the streams of lava which have 
flown from this order of volcanoes, we imagine ourselves trans^ 
ported into the neighbourhood of Etna or Vesuvius, and ask 
ourselves for the records which must, it should seem, have 
handed down to the present age the memory of catastrophes,- 
the date of which appears so recentj_ 
These records, nevertheless, are nowhere to be found, and 
the evidence we are in quest of, can only be collected from the 
volume of Nature, which, in this instance, speaks a language so 
intelligible ; for, with regard to the popular names of certain of 
the' mountains and valleys to which some have referred as indi- 
cations of a remote tradition, it seems rnore probable, that they 
were applied to the places which they designate, in consequence 
of the ideas which their appearances were calculated to suggest 
to the minds of their first inhabitants, than from the latter ha- 
ving been themselves witnesses of the events which occasioned 
them. 
The high aiitiquity of the most modern of tfiese volcanoes is 
indeed sufficiently obvious. Had any of them been in a state of 
activity in the age of Julius Caesar, that general, who encamp- 
ed upon the plains of Auvergne, and laid siege to it's principal 
city could hardly have failed to notice them. Had there been 
even any record of their existence in the time of Pliny or Sido- 
nius Apollinaris, the one would scarcely have omitted to make 
mention of it in his Natural History, nor the other to introduce 
some allusion to it among his descriptions of this his native pro- 
vince ; and yet if my friend Pfofessor Buckland be correct, in 
attributing the excavation of our valleys to the Mosaic deluge, 
Gergovia. Vide Cajsar’s Com. Lib. 7. 
