BOOK I 
gexeeal peinciples and methods of investigation 
CHAPTER I 
Earliest Knowledge of Volcanoes — Tlieir Influence on Mytliolog}- and Superstition — Part 
taken by Volcanic Rocks in Scenery — Progress of tbe Denudation of Volcanoes — 
Value of the Records of former Volcanoes as illustrating Modern Volcanic Action — 
Favourable Position of Britain for the Study of this Subject. 
Among the influences which affected the infancy of mankind, the most 
potent were those of environment. Whatever in outer nature stimulated or 
repressed courage, inventiveness, endurance, whatever tended to harden or 
to weaken the bodily faculties, whatever appealed to the imagination or 
excited the fancy, became a powerful factor in human developmeirt. 
Thus, in the dawn of civilization, the frequent recurrence of earthquakes 
and volcanic eruptions throughout the basin of the Mediterranean could not 
1>ut have a marked effect on the peoples that dv’elt by the borders of that 
sea. While every part of the region was from time to time shaken by 
underground commotion, there were certain places that became specially 
noteworthy for the wonder and terror of their catastrophes. AVhen, after 
successive convulsions, vast clouds of black smoke rose from a mountain and 
overspread the sky, when the brightness of noon was rapidly replaced by 
the darkness of midnight, when the air grew thick with stifling dust and a 
rani of stones and ashes fell from it on all the surrounding country, when 
streams of what looked like liquid fire poured forth and desolated gardens. 
Vineyards, fields and villages — then did men feel sure that the gods were 
angry. The contrast between the peacefulness and beauty of the ordinary 
landscape and the hideous warfare of the elements at these times of volcanic 
iury could not but powerfully impress the imagination and give a colour to 
early human conceptions of nature and religion. 
It was not only in one limited district that these manifestations of 
underground convulsion showed themselves. The islands of the ^Egean 
had their volcanoes, and the Greeks who dwelt among them watched their 
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