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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The Crater Of The Peak
Has So Little Depth, And The Air Is Renewed With So Much Facility,
That It Is Scarcely Probable The Quantity Of Azote Is Greater There
Than On The Coasts.
We know also, from the experiments of MM.
Gay-Lussac and Theodore de Saussure, that in the highest as
Well as
in the lowest regions of the atmosphere, the air equally contains
0.21 of oxygen.* (* During the stay of M. Gay-Lussac and myself at
the hospice of Mont Cenis, in March 1805, we collected air in the
midst of a cloud loaded with electricity. This air, analysed in
Volta's eudiometer, contained no hydrogen, and its purity did not
differ 0.002 of oxygen from the air of Paris, which we had carried
with us in phials hermetically sealed.)
We saw on the summit of the Peak no trace of psora, lecidea, or
other cryptogamous plants; no insect fluttered in the air. We found
however a few hymenoptera adhering to masses of sulphur moistened
with sulphurous acid, and lining the mouths of the funnels. These
are bees, which appear to have been attracted by the flowers of the
Spartium nubigenum, and which oblique currents of air had carried
up to these high regions, like the butterflies found by M. Ramond
at the top of Mont Perdu. The butterflies perished from cold, while
the bees on the Peak were scorched on imprudently approaching the
crevices where they came in search of warmth.
Notwithstanding the heat we felt in our feet on the edge of the
crater, the cone of ashes remains covered with snow during several
months in winter.
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