[115] "Vesuvius is a mountain admirably fitted, from its form and situation, for experiments on the effect of its attraction on the pendulum: and it would be easy in this way to determine the problem of its cavities. On Etna the problem might be solved on a larger scale."
"To what extent subterraneous cavities may exist, even in common rocks, is shown in the limestone caverns of Carniola, some of which contain many hundred thousand cubical feet of air; and in proportion as the depth of an excavation is greater, so is the air more fit for combustion.
"The same circumstances which would give alloys of the metals of the earths the power of producing volcanic phenomena, namely, their extreme facility of oxidation, must likewise prevent them from ever being found in a pure combustible state in the products of volcanic eruptions; for before they reach the external surface, they must not only be exposed to the air in the subterranean cavities, but be propelled by steam; which must possess, under the circumstances, at least the same facility of oxidating them as air. Assuming the hypothesis of the existence of such alloys of the metals of the earths as may burn into lava in the interior, the whole phenomena may be easily explained from the action of the water of the sea and air on those metals; nor is there any fact, or any of the circumstances which I have mentioned in the preceding part of this paper, which cannot be easily explained according to that hypothesis. For almost all the volcanoes in the old world of considerable magnitude are near, or at no considerable distance from the sea: and if it be assumed that the first eruptions are produced by the action of sea-water upon the metals of the earths, and that considerable cavities are left by the oxidated metals thrown out as lava, the results of their action are such as might be anticipated; for, after the first eruptions, the oxidations which produce the subsequent ones may take place in the caverns below the surface; and when the sea is distant, as in the volcanoes of South America, they may be supplied with water from great subterranean lakes, as Humboldt states that some of them throw up quantities of fish.
"On the hypothesis of a chemical cause for volcanic fires, and reasoning from known facts, there appears to me no other adequate source than the oxidation of the metals which form the bases of the earths and alkalies; but it must not be denied, that considerations derived from thermometrical experiments on the temperature of mines and of sources of hot water, render it probable that the interior of the globe possesses a very high temperature: and the hypothesis of the nucleus of the globe being composed of fluid matter offers a still more simple solution of the phenomena of volcanic fires than that which has been just developed."
