Humboldt Extends This View To
The Case Of Earthquakes Unaccompanied By Eruptions; But I
Can Hardly Conceive It Possible, That The Small Quantity Of
Aeriform Fluids Which Then Escape From The Fissured Ground,
Can Produce Such Remarkable Effects.
There appears much
probability in the view first proposed by Mr. P. Scrope, that
when the barometer is low,
And when rain might naturally
be expected to fall, the diminished pressure of the atmosphere
over a wide extent of country, might well determine
the precise day on which the earth, already stretched to the
utmost by the subterranean forces, should yield, crack, and
consequently tremble. It is, however, doubtful how far this
idea will explain the circumstances of torrents of rain falling
in the dry season during several days, after an earthquake
unaccompanied by an eruption; such cases seem to
bespeak some more intimate connection between the atmospheric
and subterranean regions.
Finding little of interest in this part of the ravine, we
retraced our steps to the house of Don Benito, where I stayed
two days collecting fossil shells and wood. Great prostrate
silicified trunks of trees, embedded in a conglomerate, were
extraordinarily numerous. I measured one, which was fifteen
feet in circumference: how surprising it is that every
atom of the woody matter in this great cylinder should have
been removed and replaced by silex so perfectly, that each
vessel and pore is preserved! These trees flourished at about
the period of our lower chalk; they all belonged to the fir-
tribe.
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