How inconsiderable, moreover, are the phenomena presented by our volcanoes and earthquakes, when compared with the convulsions of nature which the geognosist must conjecture to have occurred in the chaotic condition of our globe, when mountain masses were upheaved, solidified, or cleft asunder? Different causes must also occasion a diversity of effects in the forces of nature in parts of the earth remote from one another. The volcanoes in the new continent,” (of which I still count about twenty-eight,) “may probably have continued longer active, because the high mountain ridges on which they are erupted in rows upon long fissures are nearer to the sea, and because this vicinity appears to modify the energy of the subterranean fire, in a manner which, with few exceptions, has not yet been explained. Besides, both earthquakes and fire-erupting mountains act periodically. At present” (this I wrote forty-two years ago,) “physical disquietude and political repose prevail in the new continent, whilst in the old continent the calm repose of nature is contrasted with the dissensions of different nations. The time may however come, when this strange contrast between physical and moral forces may change its theatre of action from one quarter of the world to another. Volcanoes enjoy centuries of repose between their manifestations of activity; and the idea that in the older countries nature must be characterized by a certain repose and quietude, has no other foundation than in the mere caprice of the imagination. There exists no reason for assuming that one side of our planet is older or more recent than the other. Islands, as the Azores and many flat islands of the Pacific, which have been upheaved by volcanoes, or been gradually formed by coral animals, are indeed more recent than many plutonic formations of the European central chain. Small tracts of land, as Bohemia and Kashmeer, and many of the valleys in the moon, inclosed by a ring of mountains, may continue for a long time under the form of a sea, owing to partial inundations, and after the flowing off of these inland waters, the bottom, on which plants would gradually manifest themselves, might indeed be figuratively regarded as of more recent origin. Islands have been connected together into continental masses by upheaval, whilst other parts of the previously existing land have disappeared in consequence of the subsidence of the oscillating ground; but general submersions can, from hydrostatic laws, only be imagined as embracing simultaneously all parts of the earth. The sea cannot permanently submerge the vast lowlands of the Orinoco and the Amazon, without at the same time destroying our Baltic lands. Moreover the succession and identity of the floetz strata, and of the organic remains of plants and animals belonging to the primitive world, inclosed in those strata, show that several great depositions have occurred almost simultaneously over the whole earth.”[EG] Footnote 20: