Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1Humboldt, Alexander von
History
Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1
Humboldt, Alexander von
Astronomy; Cosmography; Physical geography; Science -- History
[footnote] *[It would appear, as there is no doubt that these fishes
proceed from the mountain itself, that there must be large lakes in the
interior, which in ordinary season are out of the immediate influence of the
volcanic action. See Daubeney, op. cit., p. 488, 497.] -- Tr.
Water and mud, which flow not from the crater itself, but from the hollows
in the trachytic mass of the mountain, can not, strictly speaking, be
classed among volcanic phenomena. They are only indirectly connected with
the volcanic activity of the mountain, resembling, in that respect, the
singular meteorological process which I have designated in my earlier
writings by the term of 'volcanic storm'. The hot stream which rises from
the crater during the eruption and spreads itself in the atmosphere,
condenses into a cloud, and surrounds the column of fire and cinders which
rises to an altitude of many thousand feet. The sudden condensation of the
vapors, and, as Gay-Lussac has shown, the formation of a cloud of enormous
extent, increase the electric tension. Forked lightning flashes from the
column of cinders, and it is then easy to distinguish (as at the close of
the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in the latter end of October, 1822) the
rolling thunder of the volcanic storm from the detonations in the interior
of the mountain. the flashes of lightning that darted from the volcanic
cloud of steam, as we learn from Olafsen's report, killed eleven horses and
two men, on the eruption of the volcano of Katlagia, in Iceland, on the 17th
of October, 1755.
Having thus delineated the structure and dynamic activity of volcanoes, it
now remains for us to throw a glance at the differences existing in their
material products. The subterranean forces sever old combinations of matter
in order to produce new ones, and they also continue to act upon matter as
long as it is in a state of liquefaction from heat, and capable of being
displaced. The greater or less pressure under which merely softened or
wholly liquid fluids are solidified, appears to constitute the main
difference in the formation of Plutonic and volcanic rocks. The mineral
mass which flows in narrow, elongated streams from a volcanic opening (an
earth-spring), is called lava. where many such currents meet and are
arrested in their course, they expand in width, filling large basins, in
which they become solidified in superimposed strata. These few sentences
describe the general character of the products of volcanic activity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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