many ancient
volcanos which have been long extinct; but that is no part of the
subject which we now inquire after; we want to see the operations of
subterraneous lava which this author has actually exposed to our view
without having seen it in that light himself. He would persuade us, as
he has done himself, that there had been in the ancient sea volcanic
eruptions under water which formed basaltic rocks; and that those
eruptions had been afterwards covered with strata formed by the deposits
made in that sea; which strata are now found in the natural position in
which they had been formed, the sea having retreated into the bowels of
the earth, and left those calcareous and arenaceous strata, with
the volcanic productions upon which they had been deposited, in the
atmosphere.

It would be out of place here to examine the explanation which this
author has given with regard to the consolidation of those deposited
strata which is by means of the filtration of water, but as in this
place there occurs some unusual or curious examples of a particular
consolidation of limestone or calcareous deposits, as well as similar
consolidations of the siliceous sort, it may be worth while to mention
them in their place that so we may see the connection of those things,
and give all the means of information which the extremely attentive
observations of this naturalist has furnished to the world of letters.

At Oberwinter our author remarks a stratum of consolidated sand above
volcanic matter, Tome 4, p. 162. "Tant que j'ai parcouru le pied du
cone, je n'ai vu qu'un terrain compose de ces debris, et cultive en
vignes. Mais apres l'avoir depasse, j'ai trouve la coupe verticale d'une
colline a couches pierreuses, si reguliers, que je les ai prises au
premier coup d'oeil pour de la pierre a chaux. L'esprit de nitre m'a
detrompe: c'est une pierre sableuse tres compacte, dont les couches, qui
n'ont souvent que quelques pouces d'epaisseur, s'elevent par une pente
insensible vers le cone volcanique qu'elle recouvrent de ce cote la
sans aucune apparence de desordre. Ces couches qui sont visiblement des
depots de la mer, quoique je n'y ai pas trouve de corps marins, ont ete
formees depuis que le cone s'etoit eleve."

This is a species of reasoning which this acute naturalist would surely
not have let pass in any other cosmologist. But here the love of system,
or a particular theory, seems to have warped his judgment. For, had
our author been tre