Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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We Might
Presume That, In The Former, The Sulphur Is Combined With Oxygen,
While, In The Latter, It Is Merely Sublimated; For Nothing Hitherto
Authorises Us To Admit That It Is Formed In The Interior Of
Volcanoes, Like Ammonia And The Neutral Salts.
When we were yet
unacquainted with sulphur, except as disseminated in the
muriatiferous gypsum and in the Alpine limestone,
We were almost
forced to the belief, that in every part of the globe the volcanic
fire acted on rocks of secondary formation; but recent observations
have proved that sulphur exists in great abundance in those
primitive rocks which so many phenomena indicate as the centre of
the volcanic action. Near Alausi, at the back of the Andes of
Quito, I found an immense quantity in a bed of quartz, which formed
a layer of mica-slate. This fact is the more important, as it is in
strict conformity with the conclusions deduced from the observation
of those fragments of ancient rocks which are thrown out intact by
volcanoes.
We have just considered the island of Teneriffe merely in a
geological point of view; we have seen the Peak towering amid
fractured strata of basalt and mandelstein; let us examine how
these fused masses have been gradually adorned with vegetable
clothing, what is the distribution of plants on the steep declivity
of the volcano, and what is the aspect or physiognomy of vegetation
in the Canary Islands.
In the northern part of the temperate zone, the cryptogamous plants
are the first that cover the stony crust of the globe. The lichens
and mosses, that develop their foliage beneath the snows, are
succeeded by grumina and other phanerogamous plants. This order of
vegetation differs on the borders of the torrid zone, and in the
countries between the tropics. We there find, it is true, whatever
some travellers may have asserted, not only on the mountains, but
also in humid and shady places, almost on a level with the sea,
Funaria, Dicranum, and Bryum; and these genera, among their
numerous species, exhibit several which are common to Lapland, to
the Peak of Teneriffe, and to the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. (This
extraordinary fact was first observed by M. Swarz. It was confirmed
by M. Willdenouw when he carefully examined our herbals, especially
the collection of cryptogamous plants, which we gathered on the
tops of the Andes, in a region of the world where organic life is
totally different from that of the old world.) Nevertheless, in
general, it is not by mosses and lichens that vegetation in the
countries near the tropics begins. In the Canary Islands, as well
as in Guinea, and on the rocky coasts of Peru, the first vegetation
which prepares the soil are the succulent plants; the leaves of
which, provided with an infinite number of orifices* (* The pores
corticaux of M. Decandolle, discovered by Gleichen, and figured by
Hedwig.) and cutaneous vessels, deprive the ambient air of the
water it holds in solution. Fixed in the crevices of volcanic
rocks, they form, as it were, that first layer of vegetable earth
with which the currents of lithoid lava are clothed.
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