Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Geography Of Animals
Marks Out Limits In Space, According To The Diversity Of Climates,
Which Determine The Actual State Of Vegetation On Our Planet.
The
geology of organized bodies, on the contrary, is a fragment of the
history of nature, taking the word history in its proper acceptation:
it describes the inhabitants of the earth according to succession of
time.
We may study genera and species in museums, but the Fauna of
different ages, the predominance of certain shells, the numerical
relations which characterize the animal kingdom and the vegetation of
a place or of a period, should be studied in sight of those
formations. It has long appeared to me that in the tropics as well as
in the temperate zone the species of univalve shells are much more
numerous than bivalves. From this superiority in number the organic
fossil world furnishes, in every latitude, a further analogy with the
intertropical shells that now live at the bottom of the ocean. In
fact, M. Defrance, in a work* full of new and ingenious ideas, not
only recognizes this preponderance of the univalves in the number of
the species, but also observes that out of 5500 fossil univalve,
bivalve and multivalve shells, contained in his rich collections,
there are 3066 univalve, 2108 bivalve, and 326 multivalve; the
univalve fossils are therefore to the bivalve as three to two. (*
Table of Organized Fossil Bodies, 1824.)
13. FORMATION OF PYROXENIC AMYGDALOID AND PHONOLITE, BETWEEN ORTIZ AND
CERRO DE FLORES.
I place pyroxenic amygdaloid and phonolite (porphyrschiefer) at the
end of the formations of Venezuela, not as being the only rocks which
I consider as pyrogenous, but as those of which the volcanic origin is
probably posterior to the tertiary strata. This conclusion is not
deduced from the observations I made at the southern declivity of the
littoral Cordillera, between the Morros of San Juan, Parapara and the
Llanos of Calabozo. In that region local circumstances would possibly
lead us to regard the amygdaloids of Ortiz as linked to a system of
transition rocks (amphibolic serpentine, diorite, and carburetted
slate of Malpasso); but the eruption of the trachytes across rocks
posterior to the chalk (in the Euganean Mountains and other parts of
Europe) joined to the phenomenon of total absence of fragments of
pyroxenic porphyry, trachyte, basalt and phonolite (The fragments of
these rocks appear only in tufas or conglomerates which belong
essentially to basaltic formations or surround the most recent
volcanoes. Every volcanic formation is enveloped in breccia, which is
the effect of the eruption itself.), in the conglomerates or
fragmentary rocks anterior to the recent tertiary strata, renders it
probable that the appearance of trap rocks at the surface of the earth
is the effect of one of the last revolutions of our planet, even where
the eruption has taken place by crevices (veins) which cross
gneiss-granite, or the transition rocks not covered by secondary and
tertiary formations.
The small volcanic stratum of Ortiz (latitude 9 degrees 28 minutes to
9 degrees 36 minutes) formed the ancient shore of the vast basin of
the Llanos of Venezuela: it is composed on the points where I could
examine it of only two kinds of rocks, namely, amygdaloid and
phonolite. The greyish blue amygdaloid contains fendilated crystals of
pyroxene and mesotype. It forms balls with concentric layers of which
the flattened centre is nearly as hard as basalt. Neither olivine nor
amphibole can be distinguished. Before it shows itself as a separate
stratum, rising in small conic hills, the amygdaloid seems to
alternate by layers with the diorite, which we have mentioned above as
mixed with carburetted slate and amphibolic serpentine. These close
relations of rocks so different in appearance and so likely to
embarrass the observer give great interest to the vicinity of Ortiz.
If the masses of diorite and amygdaloid, which appear to us to be
layers, are very large veins, they may be supposed to have been formed
and upheaved simultaneously. We are now acquainted with two formations
of amygdaloid; one, the most common, is subordinate to the basalt: the
other, much more rare,* (* We find examples of the latter in Norway
(Vardekullen, near Skeen), in the mountains of the Thuringerwald; in
South Tyrol; at Hefeld in the Hartz, at Bolanos in Mexico etc.)
belongs to the pyroxenic porphyry.* (* Black porphyries of M. von
Buch.) The amygdaloid of Ortiz approaches, by its oryctognostic
characters, to the former of those formations, and we are almost
surprised to find it joining, not basalt, but phonolite,* an eminently
felspathic rock, in which we find some crystals of amphibole, but
pyroxene very rarely, and never any olivine. (* There are phonolites
of basaltic strata (the most anciently known) and phonolites of
trachytic strata (Andes of Mexico). The former are generally above the
basalts; and the extraordinary development of felspar in that union,
and the want of pyroxene, have always appeared to me very remarkable
phenomena.) The Cerro de Flores is a hill covered with tabulary blocks
of greenish grey phonolite, enclosing long crystals (not fendillated)
of vitreous felspar, altogether analogous to the phonolite of
Mittelgebirge. It is surrounded by pyroxenic amygdaloid; it would no
doubt be seen below, issuing immediately from gneiss-granite, like the
phonolite of Biliner Stein, in Bohemia, which contains fragments of
gneiss embedded in its mass.
Does there exist in South America another group of rocks, which may be
preferably designated by the name of volcanic rocks, and which are as
distinct from the chain of the Andes, and advance as far towards the
east as the group that bounds the steppes of Calabozo? Of this I
doubt, at least in that part of the continent situated north of the
Amazon. I have often directed attention to the absence of pyroxenic
porphyry, trachyte, basalt and lavas (I range these formations
according to their relative age) in the whole of America eastward of
the Cordilleras. The existence even of trachyte has not yet been
verified in the Sierra Nevada de Merida which links the Andes and the
littoral chain of Venezuela.
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