Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. A complex full-page chart, ‘TABULAR GEOLOGICAL PROFILE’, appeared as p. 3, in mid-paragraph, and has been moved slightly forward. In general, the position of illustrations have been adjusted slightly, where necessary, to avoid falling in mid-paragraph. Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. THE SUBTERRANEAN WORLD. LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET [Illustration: CARBONIFEROUS FOREST, CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SUBTERRANEAN WORLD. BY DR. GEORGE HARTWIG, AUTHOR OF ‘THE SEA AND ITS LIVING WONDERS,’ ‘THE TROPICAL WORLD,’ ‘THE POLAR WORLD,’ AND ‘THE HARMONIES OF NATURE.’ _WITH THREE MAPS AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD._ NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD, AND CO. 1871. PREFACE. ------- Nature displays her wonders not only in the starry heavens or in the boundless variety of animal and vegetable life on the surface of our earth. In the dark regions underground she likewise shows us much that is remarkable or beautiful, or carries on gigantic operations, which are sometimes beneficent and sometimes disastrous to mankind. There lie concealed the mysterious laboratories of fire, which reveal to us their existence in earthquakes and volcanic explosions. There, in successive strata, repose the remains of extinct animals and plants. There many a wonderful cavern may be seen, with its fantastic stalactites, its rushing waters, and its noble halls. There have been deposited the rich stores of mineral wealth—the metals, the coals, the salt, the sulphur, &c.—without whose aid man would never have been more than a savage. The aim of the present work has been to describe the wonders of this hidden world in their various relations to man, now raising him to wealth, and now dooming him to destruction.