ON THE
STRUCTURE AND MODE OF ACTION
OF
VOLCANOS,
IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE.
[This dissertation was read in a public assembly of the Academy at Berlin, on the 24th of January, 1823.]
When we reflect on the influence which, for some centuries
past, the progress of geography and the multiplication of
distant voyages and travels have exercised on the study of
nature, we are not long in perceiving how different this influence
has been, according as the researches were directed to
organic forms on the one hand, or on the other to the study
of the inanimate substances of which the earth is composed—to
the knowledge of rocks, their relative ages, and their origin.
Different forms of plants and animals enliven the surface of
the earth in every zone, whether the temperature of the
atmosphere varies in accordance with the latitude and with
the many inflections of the isothermal lines on plains but
