[footnote] *["Along the whole coast of Peru the atmosphere is almost uniformly in a state of repose. It is not illuminated by the lightning's flash, or disturbed by the roar of the thunder; no deluges of rain, no fierce hurricanes, destroy the fruits of the fields, and with them the hopes of the husbandman. But the mildness of the elements above ground is frightfully counterbalanced by their subterranean fury. Lima is frequently visited by earthquakes, and several times the city has been reduced to a mass of ruins. At an average, forty-five shocks may be counted on in the year. Most of them occur in the later part of October, in November, December, January, May, and June. Experience gives reason to expect the visitation of two desolating earthquakes in a century. The period between the two is from forty to sixty years. The most considerable catastrophes experienced in Lima since Europeans have visited the west coast of South America happened in the years 1586, 1630, 1687, 1713, 1746, 1806. There is reason to fear that in the course of a few years this city may be the prey of another such visitation."] --Tr. Long habit, and the very p 217 prevalent opinion that dangerous shocks are only to be apprehended two or three times in the course of a century, cause faint oscillations of the soil to be regarded in Lima with scarcely more attention than a hail storm in the temperate zone. Having thus taken a general view of the activity -- the inner life, as it were -- of the Earth, in respect to its internal heat, its electro-magnetic tension, its emanation of light at the poles, and its irregularly-recurring phenomena of motion, we will now proceed to the consideration of the material products, the chemical changes in the earth's surface, and the composition of the atmosphere, which are all dependent on planetary vital activity. We see issue from the ground steam and gaseous carbonic acid, almost always free from the admixture of nitrogen;* carbureted hydrogen gas, which has been used in the Chinese province Sse-tschuan** for several thousand years, and recently in the village of Fredonia, in the State of New York, United States, in cooking and for illumination; sulphureted hydrogen gas and sulphurous vapors; and, more rarely,*** sulphurous and hydrochloric acids.**** [footnote] * Bischof's comprehensive work, 'Warmelchere des inneren Erdkorpers'. [footnote] **On the Artesian fire-springs (Ho-tsing) in China, and the ancient use of portable gas (in bamboo canes) in the city of Khiung-tsheu, see Klaproth, in my 'Asie Centrale', t. iii., p. 519-530. [footnote] *** Boussingault ('Annales de Chimie', t. lii., p. 181) observed no evolution of hydrochloric acid from the volcanoes of New Granada, while Monticelli found it in enormous quantity in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1813.