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Force of the Winds: Naples
Persons killed. 15,000 1755-Lisbon. 50,000 1158-Syria 20,000 1759-Syria 20,000 1268-Silicia. 60,000 1784-Ezinghian, Asia Minor.. 5,000 1456-Naples 40,000 1797-Country between Santa Fé 1531-Lisbon 30,000 and Panama. 40,000 1626-Naples. 1667-Schamaki 1692-Jamaica. 1693-Sicily 70,000 1805-Naples.... 80,000 1822-Aleppo 6,000 .. 20,000 3,000 1829-Murcia 6,000 100,000 1830-Canton 6,000 1703-Aquila, Italy. 5,000 1842-Cape Haytien. 4,000 1703-Yeddo, Japan 200,000 1857-Calabria 10,000 1706-The Abruzzi 15,000 1859-Quito. 5,000 1716-Algiers. 20,000 1860-Mendoza, South America 7,000 1726-Palermo 6,000 1868-Towns in Peru and Equador 25,000 1731-Pekin. 100,000 1875-San José de Cucuta, Col- 1746-Lima and Callao 18,000 umbia 14,000 1754-Grand Cairo. 40,000 1881-Scio 4,000 1755-Kashan, Persia. 40,000 1886-Charleston ......... 96 1887-La Riviera 600 RHEAD GEOLOGY.
Geology is the history of the earth, as it is and has been, deduced from its own natural records. Till the commencement of the present century, mankind were so blind to subjects constantly before their eyes, that Dr. Plot ascribed all fossils to an imitative sympathy of the inert for the organic; and Voltaire gravely referred the seashells, near Geneva, to the wallets of pilgrims in the Holy Wars. The first person who drew general attention to the subject was William Smith, a land-surveyor of Bath, who, in constructing roads and canals, observed that the same strata gave the same fossils, and that strata and fossils were always identical. This was a key; and no study ever became more popular, and raised itself into universal estimation more suddenly. Parkinson, Cuvier, Farey, Mantell, Brogniart, the German and Swedish miners, the Americans, the English in all colonies, and Sedgwick, Buckland, Murchison, Greenough, Lyall, Phillips, and Societies all over Europe, have been active in exploring beyond example.
Leonardo da Vinci was the recorder of correct opinions relative to fossil remains. Italy took the lead in these enquiries, but England was mystified by prejudices on this as well as other subjects, till within a century. Llwyd, Woodward, Nichoell, Brander , and Strachey, were our first collectors of what they ignorantly believed to be reliques of the Jewish Deluge. Steno, in 1669, distinguished between primitive rocks and those which contain fossils; Arduino, Lehman, and Rouelle, about 1760, enlarged on these ideas of Steno, and classed rocks as primary, secondary, and tertiary, as products of different periods. Werner, about 1780, classed rocks into primitive (as granite, mica-slate, and clay-slate;) transition, highly inclined like the primitive; secondary (floetz or flat strata), more horizontal. Trap-rocks, which resemble lava, were referred to volcanoes, but in general Werner referred to water. Hutton, a Scotsman, referred the whole to fire and to volcanic agency, and seized on the local exhibition of basalt, as proofs of universal action. Even the metallic contents of veins, ascribed to overflowing liquid metals, were pressed into his theory.
The Greek schools, over 2000 years ago, treated of the world as of indefinite antiquity, and they speak of traditions 10 or 14,000 years before their time, as facts not questionable from their antiquity. The granitic group covers the unknown nucleus as mica, quartz and feldspar in granite, mica, quartz, and garnet in mica slate, and feldspar and hornblende in sienite. There are 8 varieties of crystalline unstratified rocks, and 28 well-defined divisions of stratified formations. Then, taking the average thickness of 1000 feet, they exceed 5 miles, but, as the primary and transition series much exceed 1000 feet, the whole may be 10 miles in thickness. They are divided into primary, transition, secondary, tertiary, diluvium, and alluvium; the four last being produced from detritus of the two first.
The inclinations of beds and formations arise, in all cases, from precipitation from floods while in progressive velocity, so that the law of settlement is the angle or side of the two forces, i. e., that of weight and that of horizontal velocity. Another effect of the two forces is the overlaying of strata, the nearer parts being carried farther than the denser, and lying therefore uppermost. Angles of inclination are, therefore, necessary effects of aqueous causes and deposits, and declination indicates the course of currents, ascents being created by perpendicular action, and descents by lateral currents. Horizontal beds were formed by still waters, the denser bodies forming the lower strata. The declinations of the strata are, of course, dependent on the line of direction of the waters in tides and currents. Then the inclinations are simple and necessary effects of solution, precipitation, and deposit, combined with velocity. In stationary water, as in lakes or isolated basins, deposits would be horizontal. In water of great velocity precipitations would be arrested only by obstructions, and then form ridges of hills and mountains. With equal forces of velocity and precipitation the deposits would be at an inclination of 45°, and generally, as velocity exceeded precipitation, angles would be greater, and as precipitation exceeded velocity, angles would be less. The spiral direction of strata over strata with out-crops, such as we find at the surface, is exactly such a disposition as would arise from the velocity of water in carrying stratum over stratum, whether in solution, or by mechanical propulsion. In certain cases it would carry onward previously-laid strata, and hence that intermixture which baffles observers who are without a key.
The formation of sand-banks in rivers, and of hills and mountains, would result from any small obstruction to a current of muddy waters, flowing on the oblique side, for nearly all mountains have oblique and abrupt sides. Troughs, or concave hollows, are the forms which the indurated strata appear to take in concreting, and then these are filled with the detritus of submersions and tides.
Wherever secondary rocks are formed, we may be sure that the tides have flowed over the place; and the strata of rounded pebbles that divide such sand-stone and other rocks, are evidence of the sea level in the last southern absence of the perihelion. These alternate rises and falls of the sea level, a few hundred feet higher or lower in both hemispheres, are the foundations of the various traditions of nations about some ill-understood flood.
In all countries, on digging to certain depths, and in mining, the remains of fishes, vegetables, quadrupeds, and birds, are found in the soil or embedded in the rocks, except in those of simple substance and primitive antiquity. The general regularity with which those that are marine are laid at one level, and those which are products of land are laid at another, lead to the conclusion that the sea has repeatedly covered the land for long periods of time, and that the land has, at intermediate periods, been dry. The remains consist always, at certain depths, of species of animals, vegetables, etc., not now in existence, and often of genera not congenial to the present climate.
Cliffs or rocks in general are mere endurated sand, pressed and dried into stone; and as the sand varies in quality, the cliffs and sub-rocks vary while other changes are wrought by infiltration, pressure, and dessication. Then, as all land has been formed by tidal and sub-marine action, this economy governs all the phenomena of rocks, etc., many periods of 20,930 years must have passed to produce the varieties; but regular submersions and dessications, at such intervals, explain everything. In ancient formations are veins of gold, silver, tin, copper, lead, and zinc. In others, beds of coal and ironstone, or salt and gypsum, or freestone or limestone, or clay and iron. With a base of granite compounded of silex, carbon, alkali, oxygen, iron and manganese, with water, air, and solar light.
The lowest rocks, it is therefore inferred, were at one time the surface of the earth and the seat of organic life. These appear to have been destroyed by some great revolution, which brought new tribes of organized beings, while their kinds prove that the surface was covered with water. The subsequent appearance of amphibia, etc., prove the development of dry land where these appear to have been swept away. Among later solid rocks, the monstrous race of herbiferous quadrupeds and gigantic lacerta came into existence, when the earth seems to have acquired herbage for their subsistence. The gypsum, etc., which now contains their remains, is covered with newer deposits abounding in sea-shells, and above this stratum is found a new race of herbiferous animals of the genera of the elephant, rhinoceros, etc. Above them is the first loose soil, intermixed with marine substances, proving other immersions of the sea; and above this lies the soil which the present race of animals enjoy. The principal constituents of all strata are flint, clay, and lime, and their mixture. Granite, gneiss, mica, slate, and quartoze rocks, beneath the limestone, have no organic remains.
Crystals. Nature and art present Crystals, both regular and irregular. Το procure regular and well-formed crystals, by art, time, space and repose are required. To dispose a substance to crystallization, it is necessary to reduce it into the most complete state of division; which may be effected by solution, or by an operation purely mechanical. The same chemical elements in the same proportions generally exhibit the same crystalline form. The shape of the fundamental atoms, and the pressure of the air, produce crystals. Solution may be effected by water, as with salts; or by fire, as with metals; the solution is complete only when a degree of heat is applied sufficiently intense to convert then into gas. Some crystallized salts contain above half their weight of water, yet are dry. When fluids evaporate and the residuum becomes solid, or when they freeze, they generally solidify in regular figures called crystals, either cubes, or four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, or twelve-sided figures, or terminated by ends always regular. The separation and analysis of these figures reduce them to primitive forms. In the parallelopiped, with six parallel sides, there are forty species. In the octahedron, consisting of two four-side pyramids, joined at the base, thirty species. 3. The tetrahedron, of four equal triangles, belong to only two ores of copper. 4. The six-sided prism consisting of six equal right-angled sides with a six-sided base, has seven species. 5. The dodecahedron, of which there are two figures, one the rhomboid and the other the triangle. Two have rhomboid sides, one garnet, and only two the other. There are from 12 to 1500 different crystals; and 642 of carbonate of lime.
Hauy, in his theory of crystallization, conceives that all the forms may be produced by atomic molecules of three species. The tetrahedron, the triangular prism, and the parallelopiped, of four, five, and six sides: and Wollaston conceives that these figures may be formed by piling spherical atoms as the fundimental form. The crystals of congealing water shoot at an angle of 120°. When solutions freeze, it is the water that freezes; the foreign substance is entagled or separated. When water solidifies into ice, its crystals cross at angles of 60°, and enlarge the bulk nearly an eighth, with such force as to explode rocks, trees, and even cannon. The diamond is often in the octahedron form, but it varies. Gold, silver, copper pyrites, and salt, crystallize as cubes. Calcareous spar (angle 105°), quartz, emerald, and tourmalin crystallize as parallelopipeds, with rhomboidal sides, and unequal angles. Diamonds, the magnet, antimony, and bismuth have the regular octahedron, and topaz the same with right-angle bases. Gold and silver crystallize in four-sided pyramids: copper the same; tin in rhomboidal prisms: lead in four-sided pyramids: zinc the same: bismuth in four-sided parallelopipeds: antimony in oblong perpendiculars: arsenic in tetrahedrons. Fluor spar and common salt make cubes. Nitre a six-sided prism, sulphate of magnesia a four-sided prism. Sulphur and carbonate of soda the same, in two pyramids, rhomboid base. Emerald and cinnabar six-sided prisms. Common salt dissolved in viscid liquids crystallizes like leaves and branches of fir. Calcareous spar crystallizes only in rhombohedrons, fluor spar in cubes, and quartz in six-sided pyramids.