Travels from France to Italy, Through the Lepontine Alps, or an Itinerary of the Road from Lyons to Turin by the Way of the Pays-de-Vaud, the Vallais ... Great St. Bernard, Simplon, and St. Gothard - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1236885791 ISBN 13: 9781236885791

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1800 edition. Excerpt: ...by which nearly all the different and various forms or figures adopted by the particular salts and crystals are at present determined or defined. From this it results, that the granites, which are only a compound of small crystals, as before mentioned, adopt, almost every-where, a polyedrous figure, the masses of which have, in course of time, by their entassemens, or heaping one on the other, formed those stupendous spiry peaks, called by the inhabitants of those countries pyramids, cones, and aiguilles, or needles, which constitute the primitive chain of the Alps, Andes, and other mountains of like magnitude. There is, however, in this chain, a number of volcanoes of great height, --a circumstance hitherto wholly unknown in the Alps. Owing to the extreme irregularity which takes place in the structure of those mountains, and the confusion with which their constituent parts are united, added to their position, and the singular arrangement of the metallic veins they contain, it is reason able to infer that their crystallisation may be considered as interrupted or retarded, --or, in other words, that it had been effected at a time when the fluid in which it was taking place (which kept in a state of dissolution and suspension every particle of that crystallisation) was extremely agitated; and that besides, in that state of agitation, it acquired a degree of heat from the subterraneous fires, which, to all appearance, seem to have existed even at that epoch. To this argument, I grant, may be objected, that, as all the primitive matter which forms the granites and porphyry does not apparently contain any, or at least but a very small portion of acids, their crystallisation cannot be so easily conceived: yet if we observe that the felspar,

Details zur Ausgabe

• ISBN 10: 1236885791
• ISBN 13: 9781236885791
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch