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Show ANNOTATIONS A 'D ADDITIONS. 119 n~ntal climate-a winter cold, on single days, of-28°.4 and-30°.6 Reaumur (-32.0 and-37° Fahr.), followed by mean summer temperatures of 16°. and 17°.5 Reaumur (69° and 71°.4 Fahr.). ('9) p. 31.-" As if America had C?nerged later from the chaotic toatery cot•ering." An acute inquirer into nature, Benjamin Smith Barton, said long since with great truth (Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, p. i. p. 4), "I cannot but deem it a puerile supposition, unsupported by the evidence of nature, that a great part of America has probably later emerged from the bosom of the ocean than the other continents." The same subject was touched on by myself in a. memoir on the primitive nations of America (Neue Berlinische l\1onatschrift, bd. xv. 1806, s. 190). "Writers generally and justly praised have repeated but too often that America is in every sense of the word a New Continent. Her luxuriance of >egetation, the abundant waters of her enormous rivers, the unrepose of her powerful volcanoes, all (say they) proclaim that the still trembling earth, from the face of which the waters have not yet dried off, is here nearer to the chaotic primordial state than in the Old Continent. Such ideas appeared to me, long before I commenced my travels, alike unphilosophical and contrary to generally acknowledged physical laws. Fantastic images of terrestrial youth, and unrepose associated on the one hand-and on the other, those of increasing dryness, and inertia in maturer age-could only ha>e presented themselves to minds more inclined to draw ingenious or striking contrasts between the two hemispheres, than to strive to comprehend, in one general view, the construction of the entire globe. Are we to regard the south of Italy as more modern than its northern portions, because the former is almost incessantly disquieted by earth_ quakes and volcanic eruptions? Besides, what small phenomena are the volcanoes and earthquakes of the present day, in comparison with those revolutions of nature which the geologist must suppose to have accompanied, in the chaotic state of the earth, the elevation, solidification, disruptions, and cleavings of the mountain masses ? Diversity of causes must produce diversity in the operations of natural forces, in countries remote as well as near. Perhaps the volcanoes |