Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 200 of 779 - First - Home
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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 200 of 779
Words from 54208 to 54468
of 211363
