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vast packs and icebergs liberated from centres | ously acknowledges the great difficulty of of congelation.

But besides the submarine operations now in action, and which may serve to explain most of our ancient phenomena, it has been shown that in Russia and other cold countries there are several actual subaerial processes, by which large blocks are accumulated at different heights by the expansion of the ice of rivers, or have been piled up by the glacial action of former lakes, when at much higher levels, leaving lines of coarse angular blocks.

believing that solid masses of ice 3000 to 4000 feet thick, covered the whole region; that no action of a glacier will explain the persistent striation of the surface of an entire continent from N. to S. and that the direction of the boulders and the striæ is to a great extent up-hill. When these and many other difficulties shall have been carefully weighed, our transatlantic friends may be disposed to modify their views, particularly when they find that the existence of glaciers in Scotland and England (I mean in the Alpine sense) is not yet, at all events, established to the satisfaction of what I believe to be by far the greater number of British geologists.

The presence of Mr. Lyell at this time in North America, is indeed most opportune, for whatever changes his mind may have recently undergone, no geologist has more strenuously labored to make himself master of all its bearings, or more systematically enlarged our knowledge of this disputed subject. Possessing as he now does the advantage of observation on a vast scale, I have little doubt that he will account for the wide dispersion of blocks in America from N. to S., by referring to a cause quite as general and quite as aqueous as that by which he originally sought to explain the phenomena in Europe.*

I desist, however, in this place from entering further into the many features under which the existing agency of ice may be viewed apart from the results of the movements of glaciers. More than enough has indeed already been said; for so long as the greater number of practical geologists of Europe are opposed to the wide extension of a terrestrial glacial theory, there can be little risk that such doctrine should take too deep a hold of the mind. But whilst we may have no fear of this sort in Europe, I have lately read with regret certain passages in the Anniversary Discourse of Professor Hitchcock of the United States. In North America, striated, scored, and polished surfaces of rocks, proceeding from N. to S., for vast distances, occupy, it appears, at intervals a breadth of 2000 miles, and are seen on hard rocks at all levels from the Although the consideration of this subject sea-shore to heights of 3000 and 4000 feet. has already carried me beyond the limits I Professor Hitchcock tells us, that these had prescribed to myself, yet I cannot quit phenomena and the accumulations of gravel it without reminding you, that the greatest and blocks had always been inexplicable, geological authorities on the Continent, led until the work of Agassiz unexpectedly on by Von Buch who has so long studied threw a flood of light upon his mind. If these phenomena in his native land, are Professor Hitchcock could demonstrate opponents to the views of Agassiz. Even what he now seems to believe, that the whilst I write, I find that M. de Beaumont great mass of the continent of North Ameri- has just communicated to the Institute of ca was formerly covered with ice, he must France, a report on the results of a journey first prove that it was not at that period be- through Lapland, Finland, and the north of low the level of the sea; but as yet no facts Europe, by his countryman M. Durocher, are before us to lead us to doubt that the in which grouping the facts with great pergreat accumulation of detritus and the trans- spicuity, he handles the whole subject with port of blocks did take place beneath the his usual master's hand, and points out the waters in that country. In justice, how-value of the previous observations of Von ever, to this author, it must be said, that in expounding the glacial theory he ingeni

Geological Proceedings, Murchison and De Verneuil on Russia, vol. iii. p. 406.

+Anniversary Address. Philadelphia, April, 1841, p. 24. I must be excused for stating that Professor Hitchcock has entirely misconceived my

view, when he places my name among those who had espoused the Alpine glacial theory. My efforts have been invariably directed towards its limitation, nay, to its entire rejection, as applicable to be by far the largest portions of the surface of the globe.

Buch, Brougniart, and other writers. M. Durocher conceives that the phenomenon of the transport of erratic matters has proceeded from two successive and distinct operations: the first a great current from the pole, to which the striæ and polish of rocks, and the deposits called Osars, are referred; the second, the transport of the distant blocks by vessels of ice, when all that part of Europe which they cover was

See Principles of Geology, 2d edit. vol. i. p. 342; and Elements of Geology, 1st edit. p. 136.

subjected to the immersion of an icy sea. He does not agree with M. Böhtlingk, that the point of departure of the current can be placed in Lapland, but supposes it to have proceeded directly athwart those regions from the pole.* But the point to which I now especially advert is, that in his skilful analysis of this memoir our eminent foreign associate admits floating ice as a vera causa to explain the drift of blocks, just in the same manner as in common with Lyell, Darwin, and others, I have been endeavoring to explain the phenomenon during the last three years, and thus the inference which was drawn from plain facts is admitted, viz., that the chief tracts covered by erratic blocks were under the sea at the period of their dispersion.-(Sil. Syst. p. 536.)

Thus far had I written, gentlemen,-in short, I had, as I thought, exhausted the glacial subject at all events for this year,when two most important documents were put into my hands. The first of these is the discourse of my predecessor, who has so modified his first views, that I cannot but heartily congratulate the Society on the results at which he has now arrived. I rejoice in the prudence of my friend, who

has not permitted the arguments of the able advocate to appear as the sober judgment of so distinguished a President of the Geological Society. In fact, it is now plain that Dr.Buckland abandons, to a great extent, the theory of Agassiz, and admits fully the effects of water as well as of ice, to account for many of the long-disputed phenomena. Whilst this admission involves the concession for which we have been contending, viz., that the great surfaces of our continent were immersed, and not above the waters, when by far the greater number of the phenomena on the surface of rocks was produced, I reject for those who entertain the same opinions as myself, the simple division into "glacialists" and "diluvialists," into which Dr. Buckland has divided the combatants on this question; for to whatever extent the former title has been won by Agassiz and himself, we who have contended for the submarine action of ice in former times, analogous to that which we believe is going on at present, can never be merged with those who, under the name of diluvialists, have contended for the rush of mighty waves and waters over continents. Besides glacialists and diluvialists, my friend must therefore permit me to call for a third class, the designation of which I leave to him, in which some of us desire to be enrolled who have advocated that modified view to which the general opinion is now tending.

* M. Durocher has made two valuable observations, in showing us that the striated and polished surface of the hard rocks is sometimes covered by accumulations of sand and detritus; and that although proceeding in a general sense from the north, the The other point to which I allude, and farthest transported blocks are so distributed as to indicate radiation from certain mineralogical centres, bearing at once on this view, is a discovery much in the same way as our blocks of Shap-granite which our Librarian has just made without have, on a less scale, been scattered from one point quitting the apartments which he so truly of distribution. In stating, however, that, in the adorns. In the American Journal of Science progress of these transported masses to the south, granitic blocks always constitute the outermost zone, for the year 1826, Mr. Lonsdale has detectit appears to me that M. Durocher has generalized ed a short, clear and modest statement, enbeyond the field of his own observation. In Russia, titled "Remarks on Boulders, by Peter Dob. for example, M. de Verneuil and myself traced greenstone blocks to the same southerly latitudes as son," which, though little more than one granites. The blocks between Jurievitz and Nijny page in length, contains the essence of the Novogorod are composed of quartz rock, and of the modified glacial theory at which we have peculiar trappaan breccia known in Russia as Sol- arrived after so much debate. First deomenskoi-kamen," the parent rocks of which_we examined in situ near Petrazowodsk (Geol. Pro- scribing in a few lines the manner in which ceedings, vol. iii. p. 405), whilst the extreme bound- large boulders, weighing from ten cwt. to ary of these boulders extends to Garbatof on the fifteen tons, were dug out in clay and graOkka, S. W. of Nijny Novogorod, an deonsequently vel, when making the foundations for his very far beyond Kostroma, the limit assigned to them by M. Durocher. Again, if M. Durocher own cotton factory at Vernon, and seeing prolongs the northern drift to the flanks of the Ural that it was not uncommon to find them worn, Mountains, he is decidedly in error, for there is no abraded, and scratched on the lower side, coarse detritus whatever on the flanks of that chain, as if done (to use his own expression) by the Tehornoi-Zem, or black earth of the central regions their having been dragged over rocks and graof Russia, to which, quoting Baron A. de Meyendorf, velly earth in one steady position," he adds M. de Beaumont refers in a long note, I will now this most remarkable sentence:-"I think only say, that having studied the nature and extent of this singular deposit over very wide regions, we cannot account for these appearances, unI intend, with the help of my fellow-travellers M de less we call in the aid of ice as well as water, Verneuil and Count Keyserling, to lay before the and that they have been worn by being suspublic very shortly a sketch of its relations to the northern drift and other superficial deposits of Eu-pended and carried in ice over rocks and earth under water." To show also that he had

whether derived from the north or from itself. Of

1ope.

STRUTT'S PEDESTRIAN TOUR IN
CALABRIA AND SICILY.

From the Spectator.

read much and thought deeply on this subject, Mr. Dobson quotes British authorities to prove, that as ice-floes constantly carry huge masses of stone, and deposit them at great distances from their original situation, MR. STRUTT is an artist, and set out from so may they explain the transportation of Rome on a pedestrian tour through Calabria foreign boulders to our continents. and part of Sicily, in order to fill his sketchApologizing, therefore, for having detain-book with the costumes of the peasantry. He ed you long, and for having previously too was accompanied by an English friend, who much extended a similar mode of reasoning, had a turn for poetry; and fell in with three I take leave of the glacial theory in con- Frenchmen, who joined company for a great gratulating American science in having pos- part of the journey. They got beset by the sessed the original author of the best gla-peasant-brigands of a part of Calabria, and cial theory, though his name had escaped were robbed; the necessary steps connectnotice; and in recommending to you the ed with which affair, and the indignant symterse argument of Peter Dobson, a previous pathy of the Calabrian gentry, delayed the acquaintance with which might have saved party, but introduced them to the domestic volumes of disputation on both sides of the life and judicial practices of the people, in a manner not attainable in any other way. Released from the trouble connected with this adventure, the associated tourists pursued their journey in safety to Riggio, opposite Messina; crossed over to Sicily; travelled along the Eastern coast as far as Syracuse; and ascended Etna; when the party broke up; Mr. STRUTT visiting Palermo and its neighborhood, in his professional capacity, to execute some paintings for a Sicilian prince.

Atlantic.

The form of the work is that of letters; written off, apparently, for the author's family, stage by stage. The style is easy, lively, and familiar, without sinking to feebleness: but the matter, or the treatment of the matter, rather consists in skimming the surface of things than in any very deep examination. The consequence is, that only subjects obviously striking in themselves are very striking in Mr. STRUTT'S narrative, unless upon points that directly relate to his own profession.

In the mean time, however we may account for the transport of boulders, the striation and polish of rocks, and the accumulation of superficial detritus, we cannot quit the glacial subject without avowing our obligations to Venetz, Charpentier, and Agassiz, and above all to the last, for having brought the agency of ice more directly into consideration as a vera causa, to explain many phenomena on the surface. Even we who differ from Agassiz in his generalizations, and have not examined the Alps since the theory was propounded, should not hastily adopt opinions which may be modified after a study of the glaciers in situ. "Come and see" is the bold challenge of the Professor of Neuchâtel to all who oppose him, and sanguine as to the correctness of his opinions, he is certain that many will be converted if they would but observe the phenomena on which his views are based. Truly we must acknowledge that he was the first person who roused our attention to the The novelty of his route, and the manner effects produced by the bottom of an advan- of performing his journey, however, give cing glacier, and if geologists should even- an air of freshness to his pages. Though tually be led to believe, that certain parallel lying so close to Naples, and constantly scratches and striæ on the rocks were in passed by vessels on both its coasts, Calasome instances due to glaciers moving over-bria is one of the least-traversed countries land, but in many other cases were produced by icebergs, we must remember that the fertile mind of Agassiz has afforded us the chief means of experimentally solving the problem

in Europe. Some of this neglect arises from its leading to nowhere, for Sicily and Greece are accessible by easier ways; some from its containing no show-places, and few attractions in the form of antiquities of a tangible kind; but perhaps the want of roads, UNPARALLELED VILLANY.-At the Court of inns, and travelling-accommodations, with Assizes for the Herault, held at Montpellier, a the bad reputation of its inhabitants, and man named Pomarade, after a trial which lasted the alleged danger of robbery and murder, thirteen days, was on the 7th December found are the real causes of its neglect for it guilty of arson, nineteen highway robberies, has attractions. The scenery is magnifithirty attempts to commit other robberies, two actual murders, and five attempts to commit mur-cent; the climate in the colder seasons deder; and the court pronounced sentence of lightful; and the Mediterranean shore is studded with reminiscences of its old feudal

death.

A BANDIT'S WIDOW.

After dinner we had the honor of a visit from

State, and of the times when the Saracens | where Mr. STRUTT travelled, more interest were an object of terror to Europe, and attaches to his volume than the mere literthese coasts were especially obnoxious to ary merit of the writer might have imparted. raids for the purpose of carrying off slaves It should, however, be observed, that Mr. to Barbary. Nor is the present social state STRUTT has the eye of an artist; so that, if unworthy of examination: being, in fact, with the descriptions are short and with little in national modifications, very like that which them, they present the characteristic points prevailed throughout Europe during the mid- of the outline. Here is a touch of his qualidle ages; the gentry or territorial nobility ty, in one of his fullest pictures. remaining almost as unchanged as the peasantry, among whom blood-feuds, lawlessness, and the other characteristics of an unsettled government, still prevail. There are also some curious sprinklings of foreign races,-villages of Saracen origin, retaining their features though not their dress; and numerous settlements of Albanians, speaking a kind of Greek, wearing their old costume engrafted on the Calabrian, and said by the aborginal inhabitants to be the robbers of the country, though the neighboring Ital. ians place all Calabrians in the lowest grade -"Brutta lingua e brutta gente," said Mr. STRUTT'S landlady on the frontier village. The organized banditti, which once made Calabria so famous, is now pretty well broken up; and the profession chiefly carried on upon individual account, or in a small way, since the stringent measures of the French General MANNES, when he held the government of the province.

"By this severe judge, no proofs, no court, no twelve jurymen were required; the bare accusation of brigandage condemned a man, and the sentence was invariably death. In vain did the culprits hide themselves in the most impenetrable fastnesses. Mannés ordered the Capo Urbano to assemble the Urbans of the district, and make instant capture of them, 'otherwise,' said he, in three days your heads shall answer for theirs.' So terrible at last did his name become among the Calabrians, that a peasant, sent for by the General, whatever might be the pretext, always gave himself up for lost, confessed and received absolution before he set out, and bade all his friends farewell; showing, by the melancholy tone of his Mannes has sent for me,' how hopeless he was of ever returning. Yet these were the only measures to be pursued in a country desolated by whole troops of bandits; who, not content with pillaging and murdering travellers, dared even to sack and burn villages, and to extort vi et armis, the most exorbitant sums from those rich proprietors whose domestic forces were unable to repel the invaders."

three of the first women of the village, who had richness of the Caraffa costume; and now came been invited by our host in order to display the sailing in with all the conscious dignity of their splendid gala dresses; taking their places, to our great delight, directly in the middle of the room. ***The last of the trio was Petronilla Jaccia, notorious as having been the wife of a brigand, whose expeditions she had frequently accompanied, and whose infamous exploits she had vigorously seconded and shared. Petronilla is exactly what romantic young ladies would imagine a bandit's bride to be-tall, dark, with regular features, black eyes, and no inconsiderable portion of sullen beauty: it is, indeed, shrewdly reported at Caraffa, that she has been eminently indebted to her personal attractions for delivery from more than one well-deserved justicial chastisement. Once, in particular, when under actual sentence of death, it would have gone hard with her had not a private interview with the judge softened his obdurate sense of duty, and induced him to exert himself in procuring a reprieve. Now, however, the bold husband, who led her into such dangers, is no more; he was murdered by some of his men, a few years ago; and Petronilla, collecting the spoil his valor and her own had won, retired to her native village, where she at present resides, one of the richest and most consequential of its inhabitants.

THROWING THE HATCHET.

As we returned, we passed a vaccaro, tending his cows we fell into conversation with him; and having heard much of the skill of these fellows with the hatchet, and seeing the weapon stuck as usual in his broad belt, we begged for a proof of his dexterity: he willingly complied; and planting a stick in the ground, retired to some distance, produced the axe, which, hurled back foremost, turned whistling in the air, and in an instant cut down the stick. On our complimenting him he said—“I can throw well at a good mark: the other day, for instance, I had a quarrel with a man in that lupinfield, and I sent the hatchet so neatly that it opened his face from the eye to the chin." We left him chuckling over the remembrance of his exploit, and returned home, as the light gradually faded from the horizon.

A STRANGER IN A CALABRIAN CITY.

I shall not be sorry to leave Catanzaro, where

Sicily is not quite so fresh as Calabria; but, though more frequented than the forefoot of Italy, it has not been nearly so much. written about as many other places, and its land is not yet overrun by tourists: it is the curiosity of the inhabitants is only equalled by only in the capital cities that modern inno- their impertinence. On entering a shop, ten or vations have made way, and brigands con- twelve persons squeeze in with you; and the tradesgregate even in their vicinity. From this man, instead of serving you, begins questioning novelty of subject in both the countries you as to whence you come, where you are going,

what is your object in travelling, &c. One respectable-looking chemist, to whom I said that I came from England, gravely informed me that he supposed that country was not in the kingdom of Naples, as he knew of no such place.

FILIAL OBEDIENCE IN CALABRIA.

We staid conversing some time with a young man, who had a fine natural taste for music; and with some young priests, who envied greatly our facility of travelling. "How is it possible," they cried, "that your parents should have allowed you, so young, to leave them and travel so far, to girar il mondo; whilst we cannot even get permission from our fathers to go and see Catanzaro ?" This is one proof, among many others we have had occasion to remark, of the height to which filial duty is carried in this country: a young man, who had certainly arrived at years of discretion, being at least three or four and twenty, complained in our presence that his father would not give him leave to go to the next village; but the idea of going without leave seemed not for an instant to have entered his head. The great respect and deference paid to parents throughout Calabria has been adduced, I think, by Galanti, as one proof of its inhabitants being descended from the ancient Samnites, who carried the filial principle to its highest perfection.

BRIGAND DOMESTIC LIFE.

the rifle in the night; and before warned, merely muttered to himself, "'o zio ch' ammazza la Giuditta," and turned quietly round to sleep again.

VIEW FROM MOUNT ETNA.

It took us an hour of laborious walking to reach the summit of the cone; but we were well repaid on our arrival by the magnificence of the prospect, and the awful grandeur of the vast crater, whose precipitous dark abyss sunk to an immense depth below us. Its sheer rocky sides are rent in various directions, affording escape to the impatient vapors that burst from every part; and the sun, which illuminated one side whilst it left the other and the bottom in shadow and darkness, discovered in it a thousand beautiful variations of tint, caused by the exhaling sulphur. When we threw some masses of scoriæ down the crater, the thundering noise produced was frightful, as if old Etna roared at the insult: altogether, the impression produced by this stupendous volcano is one of the most powerful I have ever experienced. To attempt to give an idea of it upon paper was ridiculous; yet we did attempt it, though with fingers numbed with cold, and ill calculated to undertake such a task.

We next turned our attention to the surrounding prospect. Sicily lay, as it were, at our feet, bright and sparkling, except where Etna flung his gigantic shadows across the country. The sea was perfectly visible, encircling the whole island, even beyond Palermo and Marsala; so that we saw it at once One incident was related to us, which is not as an island upon the map. The Pharos appeared calculated to show their domestic transactions in a mere stream; the Calabria, with its Appennines, a very favorable light, in spite of the usual romantic shrunk into insignificance, quite a near neighbor. ideas of the eternal fidelity of a brigand's bride. The Gulf of Tarento, and the old high-heel bootThe chief of a band which infested this province had form of Italy, might be easily traced; whilst the a young wife, very much attached to him, who fol- isles of Lipari, Vulcano, and distant Stromboli, lowed him in all his perilous wanderings, and pre-rising from the sea to the north, slightly misty in sented him with a son and heir worthy, she hoped, that quarter, and the bold heights of Malta far of imitating the glorious exploits of his sire. This south, seemed, at such an elevated horizon, like unfortunate little bambino, however, so disturbed mountains suspended in the sky. The view of the peace of the brigand's tent with its infantine Etna itself was perfect; with its various lower cries, that he threatened more than once to put an craters, and its eruptions, whose course we traced end to its wailing; and one night, when returning on every side; particularly that destructive one savage and disappointed from an unsuccessful ex- which poured in 1669 from the Monte Rosso, a pedition, he was again provoked by its squalls, ris- dark double-headed eminence, rather above and ing suddenly in a fury, he put his threat into exe-westward of Nicolosi, and almost overwhelmed cution before the eyes of the terrified mother. Catania with its disastrous flood.

NEAPOLITAN SOLDIERS.

From that moment love gave place in her heart to hatred and the desire of vengeance; whilst her husband, enraged at her continually regretting the child, and perhaps suspecting some vindictive inWherever I stop, the long gun of my friend tentions on her part, resolved, after some domestic Marmoreano may be seen watchfully circling about squabbles, upon putting her also to death. One the neighborhood; for there is still some degree of night, having confided his project to his nephew, danger in the environs of Palermo, and the activity whom he had left at the head of the camp of bri- and courage of the Neapolitan gendarmes are not gands, he told him not to give the alarm if he heard very highly esteemed. Seven of them, the other the report of a gun, as it would merely be himself day, captured a brigand, and were taking him to giving a quietus to la Giuditta: and with this warn-town, when eight of his companions appeared, and ing he departed to his own tent, a little distant from immediately rescued him from the unresisting solthe others. Now it so happened that his loving diers. Yesterday another, employed in preventing spouse had fixed upon this very evening for the the contraband introduction of bread, which may performance of her own long-nursed schemes of not be brought within a certain distance of Palermo revenge; and having deferred her own fate by her without paying duty, had his gun taken from him, more than usually amiable demeanor, and artfully and his person ignobly kicked by a peasant, who got her victim to sleep, she discharged the con- was offended at some suspicion being expressed as tents of a rifle into his body; and cutting off his to the contents of his pockets. The peasant is now head, escaped with it to Reggio, where she claim-in prison; but the commandant is advised to let ed and obtained a reward from the authorities for him go, in order not to spread the story of the supehis destruction. The nephew heard the report of riority of an unarmed peasant to a gendarme.

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