resemblance exists between maritime Flanders and the opposite low coast
of England, both in elevation above the sea, and in the internal
structure and arrangement of their soil. They contain similar organic
remains of marine animals, as well as of tropical plants; and they each
have a stratum of decayed trees and compressed vegetable matter below
the present level of the sea. He, therefore, concludes that the two
countries were once continuous; and instead of supposing that the sea is
now higher than formerly, he gives it as his opinion, that this part of
the earth’s surface has sunk below its ancient level. That the epoch at
which this catastrophe took place, must have been in a very remote age,
he thinks may be proved from the sixteen feet bed of soil, which now
covers the submerged forest; and because it appears from historical
records in the Academy of Brussels, that no change of that kind has
happened in Flanders for more than two thousand years.
But the _uncovering_ of the woody stratum in the Sutton islets by the
action of the sea, he refers to a comparatively recent date. The people
have a tradition that their parish church once stood on the spot where
those islets are now; and it is very probable that before the skilful
embankments were made which at present restrain the stormy inundations
of the North Sea, the soil was gradually washed away by the waves, and
the trees were thus left exposed.
When we had done reading the above, my uncle told us that he had himself
visited the little hamlet of Sutton. The tides unfortunately were not
low enough to expose the islets, or rather the sandbanks, which the
Doctor mentions; but he saw a great number of the stumps and roots of
the trees, which the country people had obtained at favourable
opportunities. One fine oak stem had just been drawn on shore: it
measured forty feet in length, and five feet in circumference; and the
wood, though rather soft on the outside, was sound within, though all
black. He cut off a few chips with his knife, and was so good as to give
me one of them. So, mamma, if the stratum of earth which now covers this
submarine forest was deposited there by the deluge, it is clear that the
tree my uncle saw was antediluvian; and that the oak chip in my
possession was of the same growth of timber as that of which the Ark was
constructed.
_16th, Sunday._--A question, that Wentworth asked, about the object and
meaning of the prophecies contained in Deuteronomy, led to some
observations of my uncle’s, which I will endeavour to give you.
“The prophecies of Moses increase in number and clearness towards the
close of his writings. He appears to have discerned futurity with more
exactness as he approached the end of his life. To be convinced of this,
you have only to compare the records of history with his prediction of
the successes as well as the dispersions and desolations of the
Israelites; compare the rapid victories of the Romans, and the miseries
sustained by his besieged countrymen, with his denunciations; and
particularly compare his prophecies relative to the future condition of
the Jewish nation, with their accomplishment which is still going on
under your own observation, and which, indeed, may be called a standing
miracle.”
“But are we certain that some of these distant prophecies have not been
added in later times?” Wentworth said.
“I am glad that you have made that enquiry,” replied my uncle, “because
it gives me an opportunity of shewing you how impossible it is that any
such addition could have been made to the Pentateuch. In the fourth
chapter of Deuteronomy are these words: ‘Ye shall not add unto the word
which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it.’
“This prohibition preserved these books from the slightest alteration;
for it was considered so binding, that no copies were allowed to be made
by any persons but the Scribes attached to the synagogue; and as the
Jews were commanded to read portions of them every Sabbath day in their
families, and as at certain times the whole ‘law’ was publicly read to
the congregation, it is evident that any alteration must have been
noticed. There is a remarkable proof of the fidelity with which that
injunction was obeyed, in this fact; that the Samaritans have preserved
the law of Moses to this day, as uncorrupted as the Jews themselves have
done; although they were irreconcileable enemies, and though they have
been exposed to all the changes and revolutions that can befall a nation
during the long interval of two thousand four hundred years. No
opportunity could have been more tempting than when the ten tribes
separated from the house of David, and when each kingdom was zealously
supported by a rival priesthood; yet both parties religiously preserved
the books of the law, without changing a letter.
“From the Christian era down to this day, the Jews, though dispersed
into every country of the globe, continue to read the books of Moses and
the Prophets every Sabbath day, in the original Hebrew; and, however
they may differ from us, or among themselves, in the _interpretation_ of
various expressions, they have always considered the strict preservation
of the original _text_ as the most important of their duties. Those
books have now been translated into so many languages, and cited by so
many authors, and have been the subject of so much discussion from the
times of the Apostles, that it is absolutely impossible that any
fraudulent change can have taken place since that period. I may add,
that the books of the Old Testament were translated into Greek by the
command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about three centuries and a half before
that period; and they have therefore been for upwards of two thousand
years in the hands of heathens and sceptics, who would have been eager
to detect any alteration that might have been attempted.
“It is, indeed, a most striking circumstance, that notwithstanding the
many corruptions which the Israelites fell into while they had the sole
custody of these books, no omissions should have been made in the
copies, nor any attempts to suppress those parts of the law which bore
directly on their misconduct; and I think we may safely infer, that it
was the will of Him who had given the law, and who had inspired the
prophecies, that they should remain an indestructible ‘memorial to all
generations.’”
_17th._--The more I learn from my uncle’s kind geological conversations,
the more I see the necessity of acquiring some knowledge of mineralogy,
in order to understand them. In the mean time, Caroline and I find even
the general views he gives us so interesting, that we seldom miss an
opportunity of leading him to the subject. This morning he told us, that
the _debris_ of the hills which accumulate in alluvial districts usually
continue in the loose form of gravel or sand, or mud, or clay, in which
they were deposited. “Their visible transformation,” he said, “into
stone is of rare occurrence; in some circumstances, however, especially
on the sea coast, we may perceive the consolidation of the sand and
gravel into thin strata. If a stream, impregnated with _oxide of iron_,
should empty itself on the beach, it acts as a cement, and the process
goes on rapidly. The northern coast of Cornwall affords some examples of
this sort of petrification at home; and abroad it may be seen on a much
larger scale on the shores of Greece, Karamania, Sicily, and the West
Indies. Abundance of sea shells and other organic remains are found in
it; and at Guadaloupe a human skeleton was discovered in the beach,
imbedded in a mass of that description.
“Some springs of water are so highly loaded with calcareous particles,
that the sediment they deposit soon hardens into stone; and the
_stalactites_ which I shewed you are formed in a similar manner, in the
caverns and fissures of all limestone countries. Those were very small
specimens, but in some places, for instance in the celebrated grotto of
Antiparos, one of the Greek islands, they are found of enormous
magnitude, forming rows and clusters of columns, that reach from the top
to the bottom of that great cavern. The water in slowly dripping through
the rock becomes saturated with lime; as the drops exude from the
crevices, or trickle down the stalactites already formed, they are
exposed to the air; the watery part then evaporates, and the lime forms
a hard stony crust; in some cases assuming the shape of small crystals.”
When we reached home, my uncle obligingly laid M. De Choiseul Gouffier’s
voyage on the table for us; and we all read with astonishment his
description of that wonderful cavern, which is a thousand feet long, and
full of these curious productions. The _stalagmites_ that grow upwards
from the floor, are equally curious. My uncle explained to us, that when
the quantity of water that trickles through the roof is more than can be
evaporated from the surface of the stalactite, the remainder falls on
the floor, where the same process occurs; and thus the upper and lower
concretions proceed till they meet each other and form an entire column.
In the middle of the widest part of the cavern there is a stalagmite of
twenty feet in diameter and twenty-four in height; and on this superb
natural altar, another French nobleman had mass celebrated by his
chaplain to more than five hundred people who surrounded it. The cavern
was lighted by a hundred large torches and four hundred lamps; and the
splendour of this illumination, reflected by the concretions which hung
from the roof, or which lined the sides, is described as producing a
very magnificent effect.
_18th._--It will not be my uncle’s fault if I do not pick up some
information in this delightful house, for every day he tells us
something new. He has just been describing the method of casting plate
glass; and I hope some day to see the whole operation myself.
The furnace for melting the materials is about eighteen feet long, and
it is surrounded by ovens for _annealing_ the plates of glass when made,
that is, for cooling them slowly. The pots in which the materials are
melted, are made of a sort of tough clay that is found at Stourbridge,
in Worcestershire, as it has the property of standing the most intense
heat; and they contain about twenty hundred weight of melted glass, or
metal, as it is called by the workmen. The _cuvettes_, or cisterns,
which convey the liquid glass to the casting table, are made of the same
clay.
When the metal is sufficiently fluid, refined, and settled, which
happens in about thirty-six hours, it is put, by means of ladles, into
the cisterns, which are left in the furnace about six hours longer, till
the little bubbles formed by this disturbance of the glass have all
disappeared. The door of the furnace is now opened, and by a chain the
cistern is drawn out upon an iron carriage, and conducted to the casting
table. Here it is raised, by means of a crane, against two iron bars,
which are so contrived as to incline the cistern, and empty the fiery
torrent on the table.
This table is covered with a thick copper plate made very smooth on the
surface; and it is supported on wheels, so that it can be moved from one
annealing furnace to another. To regulate the thickness of the glass,
two iron rulers are placed along the table, and on these rest the
extremes of a very heavy roller, or cylinder of copper, which, as it
moves along, drives the superfluous matter before it, and renders the
two faces of the glass parallel. The iron rulers being moveable, serve
also to determine the width of the glass plate, and to prevent the
matter from running over the sides; the waste metal falls into a trough
of water at the end of the table, and is reserved for the next melting.
As soon as the glass has cooled to a proper consistence it is examined;
and if any bubbles or flaws are found, it is broken up and returned to
the melting pot: but if it has a sound appearance, the table is rolled
to the mouth of the annealing furnace, and the plate is carefully
deposited there. The heat of this furnace is at first very great, but it
is diminished every day for a fortnight, by which time the glass is
sufficiently annealed. This process renders the glass less brittle; for,
if suddenly cooled, my uncle says, it would fly into pieces when
touched.
_19th._--Much as we were all interested by the manufacture of plate
glass, my uncle steadily refused to carry us any further yesterday than
the annealing furnace: this evening, therefore, as soon as we were
comfortably collected round the fire, after dinner, we reminded him that
he was to describe both the grinding and polishing operations; and the
following is the substance of what he said.
The annealing furnace generally contains six plates of glass; when they
are withdrawn, they are cut square by a large diamond, which moves in a
wooden frame, and they are then carried to the grinding room. There each
plate is laid on a table, covered with a large slate or flag; and to
keep the glass steady it is bedded on the slate in wet plaster of Paris,
which you know has the property of _setting_, or becoming hard, in a few
minutes. A smaller plate of glass is then laid on the larger one, and
being properly loaded and drawn forwards and backwards, with a constant
supply of fine sharp sand and water, the two glasses grind each other to
a smooth even surface. A ledge round the lower glass prevents the sand
and water from running off; and the upper or moveable glass has a strong
plank cemented to it on which the weights are laid. An upright pin is
fixed to this plank, to which a handle, like a coach wheel, is attached
for the workmen to give motion to the glass, and much skill is required
to vary this motion in every possible direction; for if they were
frequently to repeat the same stroke, the glasses would grind each other
into furrows. But no matter what pains are taken to vary this motion,
the two surfaces have always a tendency to become slightly spherical,
one convex and the other concave; and to prevent this, the upper glasses
of the different grinding tables are occasionally changed, so that two
convex or two concave plates mutually correct each other.
When by these means a true surface has been obtained, finer sand is
used, and then emery of increasing degrees of fineness, till the
business of grinding is finished, and the plate is given to the
polisher, whose operations my uncle was obliged to reserve for another
evening.
_20th._--Within the last few days the swallow has returned to us; I
remember seeing it last autumn, but I did not notice it much.
I have observed that its motions are very rapid, and that it sometimes
perches on the house, where it makes an odd little twittering noise.--It
is a very pretty bird; the back and wings are black, glossed with
purple; and the breast white, with a spot of dull red upon it. I have
often read of swallows in poetry, and I shall be glad to watch this
little summer guest, as it sports in the sunshine, or skims along the
surface of the water. This species is, I find, the house or chimney
swallow, and is distinguished from the rest of the tribe by a small
white spot on each feather of the tail, which is more forked than any
other species.
Mary tells me that these birds generally appear in England about the
middle of April, though some few may be seen a little earlier; and that
they remain to the end of September. Their arrival, she says, is always
considered to be the harbinger of summer, as they come here from warmer
climates.
See from bright regions, borne on odorous gales,
The swallow, herald of the summer, sails.
There is a remarkable conformity, my uncle says, between the vegetation
of certain plants and the arrival of particular birds of passage.
Linnæus remarked, that in Sweden the wood anemone blows on the arrival
of the swallow, and the marsh marygold when the cuckoo sings; and a
similar fact appears to have been observed in other countries also, for
the same Greek word signifies both a cuckoo and a young fig, from their
appearing at the same time.
These house swallows are the earliest of all the various species, as
well as the most common. They build in barns, out-houses, and even in
chimneys, the warmth of which they like; and they are said to pass with
surprising address up and down the narrowest flues, to the depth of
perhaps six feet, without soiling their wings.
All kinds of swallows, as they skim along the surface of the water, sip
without stopping; but the common swallow only washes while on the wing;
gliding through the pools many times together without seeming to stop.
_21st._--After some little conversation about the alluvial alterations
of the coast, and the changes produced in the interior by the different
causes which my uncle had already mentioned, he said to us this morning,
“Those alterations are so gradual that years are required to detect
their operations, or to measure the rate of their progress; but the
gigantic changes effected by volcanoes and earthquakes carry their
desolation at once over whole districts. You have, no doubt, read an
account of some of the destructive eruptions of mount Vesuvius, by which
you know the city of Herculaneum was overflown with a torrent of melted
lava, and Pompeii was buried, and remained concealed for many centuries
under the ashes that were ejected from the crater.
“Large tracts of country seem to have been produced by volcanoes, and
after the lapse of ages the decomposed lava has become a fertile soil.
But even within the reach of history new volcanic mountains have been
elevated, and new islands have sprung out of the ocean. Pliny and Seneca
describe two marine volcanoes that raised themselves out of the water in
the Grecian archipelago; and in the beginning of the last century the
same thing again happened in the same place. In 1720, a small volcanic
island rose out of the sea near Terceira, one of the Azores; and in
1811, among the same group of islands, another violent eruption of lava
produced an island of considerable altitude; but in the following year
it sunk into the ocean. In the sixteenth century the Lucrine Lake near
Naples disappeared, and Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill six hundred feet
high, and four miles in circumference, rose out of the place it had
occupied.
“Perhaps the most wonderful example I can give you of volcanic action,
is the elevation of Mount Jorullo, near the city of Mexico, in 1759.
Alarming sounds and repeated earthquakes, which continued for three
months, had prepared the inhabitants for some dreadful convulsion; when
at length a tract of ground, from three to four miles in extent, swelled
up in the shape of a bladder to the height of 500 feet. The terrified
natives, who witnessed this extraordinary scene from the neighbouring
mountains, asserted that flames burst from the ground; that red-hot
rocks were thrown to a prodigious height; and that the surface of the
earth was seen to heave like an agitated sea. The surrounding district
is covered by hundreds of small cones called _hornitos_, or ovens, by
the inhabitants; they are about ten feet high, and from each a thick
smoke ascends. From among these ovens six large masses arose from the
plain, some of them upwards of 1200 feet; and the volcano of Jorullo,
which has never ceased to burn, is now 1700 feet high. The place where
this extraordinary convulsion took place was forty leagues from any
volcano; and what renders this remarkable is, that Jorullo appears to be
in the exact line of continuation of a chain of distant volcanoes, as if
there were a subterranean communication. Though the fire is now much
less violent, and though the plain and even the great volcano begin to
be covered with vegetation, yet Humboldt found the air dreadfully heated
by the small ovens, and the thermometer rose to 202° on being plunged
into the aqueous vapour emitted by every fissure in the ground.
“It is said, that two rivers fall into the burning chasm, and that at
some miles distance they emerge from the ground in a heated state. You
may recollect Colonel Travers told you that he had seen the thermometer
at 200° in a subterraneous spring called Nero’s baths, at Solfaterra,
near Naples; and that he had eaten an egg which it had completely boiled
in a few minutes.
“It is computed that there are at present nearly a thousand volcanoes
known to exist, and yet there is no doubt that, in a former state of the
globe, they must have been more numerous, and far more active and
extensive in their operations. Remains of extinct volcanoes of great
size are scattered in almost every country, and geologists are every day
discovering large tracts of rocks and earths, which there is every
reason to ascribe to volcanic agency.
“Several have been found in Europe, which for many centuries must have
been at rest. Great part of Italy and Sicily are clearly volcanic. Near
Coblentz, in Germany, are the remains of several craters, and large
masses of lava are seen strewed over the surrounding country. Along the
Rhine entire chains of volcanic hills are found; and near Spa there are
traces of some very large volcanoes, with deep craters half full of
water. Great part of Languedoc and Provence in France are volcanic; and
Auvergne presents an astonishing example of the activity of its ancient
volcanoes, for the whole country consists of lava. In the East Indian
islands there are great numbers; Sumatra, Java, and the Molucca islands,
possess some of the finest volcanoes now existing. You know, from
Humboldt, how numerous they are on the western side of South America and
Mexico; and Nootka Sound, in the 50th degree of north latitude, was
observed by Captain Cook to be entirely volcanic. In the Pacific Ocean,
Easter Island is a mere mass of lava and basalt; and I need scarcely
mention the Sandwich Islands, as you have been lately so much interested
by Mr. Ellis’s account of the great volcano in Owhyhee, with its sublime
gulf of boiling lava, seven or eight miles in circumference.”
_23rd, Sunday._--My uncle continued the subject of the prophecies of
Moses, this morning.
“There are different kinds of prophecies in the books of Moses, some of
which were fulfilled soon after the prediction, such as the conquest of
the land of Canaan; and others the accomplishment of which was not to
follow till after a long interval of time, such as those that relate to
the coming of the Messiah, and the dispersion of the Jewish nation; but
in all there is the same clearness and consistency, the same tone of
inspiration and authority, and the same internal proofs of their truth.
The Jews have always looked on him as by far the greatest of all their
prophets. They assert, that the others received the divine
communications by dreams and visions; whereas they were given to Moses
by an immediate revelation from God.
“In the most important of all his prophecies--‘The Lord thy God will
raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren,
like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken’--Moses does not say a priest or
a king, though the Messiah was to be both; but ‘a prophet,’ in order to
put the people on their guard not to look for him among any of their
priests or kings. They were not to expect a person clothed with the
external honours of the throne, nor ranking high in the priestly form of
their government; but were to consider divine inspiration as the true
test of that great prophet to whom they were to hearken, and who was to
be the future head of their religion.
“In consequence of this prediction, an expectation of some extraordinary
prophet had always prevailed among the Jews, and particularly about the
time of our Saviour. They understood and applied it, as well as other
similar prophecies, to the Messiah, who they admitted would be as great
as Moses: but, forgetting the distinct explanation with which it was
accompanied, they looked for pomp and splendour, instead of the quiet
manifestation of divine power on suitable occasions; they looked for the
worldly attributes of dominion, instead of the meekness and humility
which had characterized Moses, and which entitled him to use the
expression, ‘like unto me.’
“When our Saviour had fed five thousand men by a miracle like that of
Moses, who fed the Israelites in the wilderness, then all those that
were present exclaimed,--‘This is of a truth that prophet that should
come into the world.’ St. Peter and St. Stephen[1] declared to the
people that the prophecy directly applied to Jesus, for he fully
answered the definition of a prophet like unto Moses. He was by birth a
Jew of the middle class like Moses. He had immediate communication with
the Deity, and to him God spake ‘face to face’ as he had done to Moses.
He was a lawgiver as well as Moses, and he performed ‘signs and
wonders’ greater than those of Moses.--‘I will put words in thy mouth,’
God said to Moses; and our Saviour says, ‘I have not spoken of myself;
but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should
say, and what I should speak.’