These Bold Hypotheses On The Communication Between Two Neighbouring Basins Have Presented Themselves In Every Zone To The Imagination Of The Ignorant, As Well As To That Of The Learned; For The Latter, Without Confessing It, Sometimes Repeat Popular Opinions In Scientific Language.

We hear of subterranean gulfs and outlets in the New World, as on the shores of the Caspian sea,

Though the lake of Tacarigua is two hundred and twenty-two toises higher, and the Caspian sea fifty-four toises lower, than the sea; and though it is well known, that fluids find the same level, when they communicate by a lateral channel.

The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plains, and the cultivation of indigo, have produced within half a century in the quantity of water flowing in on the one hand, and on the other the evaporation of the soil, and the dryness of the atmosphere, present causes sufficiently powerful to explain the progressive diminution of the lake of Valencia. I cannot concur in the opinion of M. Depons* (who visited these countries since I was there) "that to set the mind at rest, and for the honour of science," a subterranean issue must be admitted. (* In his Voyage a la Terre Ferme M. Depons says, "The small extent of the surface of the lake renders impossible the supposition that evaporation alone, however considerable within the tropics, could remove as much water as the rivers furnish." In the sequel, the author himself seems to abandon what he terms "this occult case, the hypothesis of an aperture.") By felling the trees which cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations; want of fuel and scarcity of water. Trees, by the nature of their perspiration, and the radiation from their leaves in a sky without clouds, surround themselves with an atmosphere constantly cold and misty.

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