The force which was able to produce so important an action
must have been long accumulating in the interior before it could overpower
the resistance of the mass pressing upon it; it sometimes, for instance, on
the origin of new islands, will raise granular rocks and conglomerated
masses (strata of tufa filled with marine plants) above the surface of the
sea. The compressed vapors escape through the crater of elevation, but a
large mass soon falls back and closes the opening, which had been only
formed by these manifestations of force. No volcano can, therefore,
p
be produced.*
[footnote] *Leopold von Buch, 'Phys. Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln',
s. 326; and his Memoir 'uber Erhebungscratere und Vulcane', in Poggend.,
'Annal.', bd. xxxvii., s. 169.
In his remarks on the separation of Sicily from Calabria, Strbo gives an
excellend description of the two modes in which islands are formed: "Some
islands," he observes (lib. vi., p. 258, ed. Casaub.), "are fragments of the
continent, others have arisen from the sea, as even at the present time is
known to happen; for the islands of the great ocean, lying far from the main
land, have probably been raised from its depths, while, on the other hand,
those near promontories appear (according to reason) to have been separated
from the continent.
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