The red notebook of Charles Darwin / edited, with an introduction and notes by Sandra Herbert.

  • Charles Darwin
Date:
1980
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The red notebook of Charles Darwin / edited, with an introduction and notes by Sandra Herbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    140/184 (page 126)
    126 SANDRA HERBERT have encountered it first in print. Darwin did not own a personal copy of the 4th edition. George Steuart Mackenzie (note 110) as quoted in John Barrow, Jr., A Visit to Iceland. . .1834 (London, 1835), p. 224: This supposition [of lava blistering, see note 110] would appear to afford a better solution of the difficult problem of accounting for those blocks of lava that are perched on high ridges, than that given by Sir George Mackenzie, who imagines this lava to have flowed from the lower ground, and calls it the 'ascending lava.' He says—' It is caused by the formation of a crust on the coating of the surface, and a case or tube being thus produced, the lava runs in the same manner as water in a pipe.' The quotation is from Mackenzie, Travels in the Island of Iceland, p. 108. Sir Henry Holland, F.R.S. (1788-1873), fashionable London physician, traveller, essayist, and a distant relative to Charles Darwin through Josiah Wedgwood the potter. Holland accompanied Sir George Steuart Mackenzie (note 110) to Iceland in 1810 and was the author of the 'Preliminary Dissertation on the History and Litera¬ ture of Iceland ' in Mackenzie, Travels in the Island of Iceland, pp. 1-70. Apparently Darwin intended to consult him on the subject of blistered lava. On this see Barrow, A Visit to Iceland, p. 223: Dr. Holland, in his account of the Mineralogy of Iceland, seems to countenance the opinion of these masses having been thrown up on the very spot they occupy, observing there was one formation of lava which had every appear¬ ance of not having flowed. Speaking of these masses of lava, he says: — 'It was heaved up into large bubbles or blisters, some of which were round, and from a few feet to forty or fifty in diameter; others were long, some straight, and some waved. A great many of these bubbles had burst open, and displayed caverns of considerable depth.' However, this description, which Barrow attributed to Holland, is rather to be found in Mackenzie's chapter entitled 'Mineralogy' in Travels in the Island of Iceland, p. 390. Barrow's error seems to have stemmed from a mistaken belief that Holland rather than Mackenzie wrote the chapter on mineralogy. See also VI, pp. 95-96, and 103. Barrow, A Visit to Iceland, pp. 276-277: Here, then, we have the plain and undeniable evidence of subterranean or sub-marine fire, exerting its influence under the sea, almost in a direct line, to the extent of 16 1/2 degrees of latitude, or more than 1100 statute miles. If we are to suppose that one and the same efficient cause has been exerted in heaving up this extended line of igneous formations, from Fairhead to Jan Meyen, we may form some vague notion how deep-seated the fiery focus must be to impart its force, perhaps through numerous apertures, in a line of so great an extent, and nearly in the same direction. It may probably be considered the more remarkable, that no indication whatever is found of volcanic fire on the coast-line of Old Green¬ land, close to the westward of the last-mentioned island, and also to Iceland, nor on that of Norway on the opposite side, nor on that of Spitzbergen; on these places all is granite, porphyry, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, lime, marble, and sandstone.