Copy 1, Volume 1

Cosmos, a sketch of a physical description of the universe / by Alexander von Humboldt ; translated from the German by E.C. Otté.

  • Alexander von Humboldt
Date:
1849-1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cosmos, a sketch of a physical description of the universe / by Alexander von Humboldt ; translated from the German by E.C. Otté. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    throw some degree of light on the history of the atmosphere, and the distribution of the organic bodies imbedded in the solid crust of the earth. This study enables us to understand how a tropical temperature, independent of latitude (that is, of the distance from the poles), may have been produced by deep fissures remaining open, and exhaling heat from the interior of the globe, at a period when the earth’s crust was still furrowed and rent, and only in a state of semi-solidifi- cation; and a primordial condition is thus revealed to us, in which the temperature of the atmosphere, and climates generally were owing rather to a liberation of caloric and of different gaseous emanations, (that is to say, rather to the energetic re-action of the interior on the exterior,) than to the position of the earth with respect to the central body, the sun. The cold regions of the earth contain, deposited in sedi- mentary strata, the products of tropical climates; thus, in the coal formations, we find the trunks of palms standing upright amid coniferae, tree ferns, goniatites and fishes having rhomboidal osseous scales;* in the Jura lime- stone colossal skeletons of crocodiles, plesiosauri, planulites, and stems of the cycadese; in the chalk formations, small polythalamia and bryozoa, whose species still exist in our seas; in tripoli, or polishing slate, in the semi- opal and the farina-like opal or mountain meal, agglomerations of siliceous infusoria which have been brought to light by the powerful microscope of Ehrenberg f; and lastly, in transported soils, * See the classical work on the fishes of the old world by Agassi* Rech. sur les Poissons Fossiles, 1834, vol. i. p. 38 ; vol. ii. pp. 3, 28, 34, App. p. 6. The whole genus of Amblypterus, Ag. nearly allied to Pa- laeoniscus (called also Palseothrissum) lies buried beneath the Jura forma- tions in the old carboWerous strata. Scales which, in some fishes, as in the family of Lepidoides (order of Ganoides), are formed like teeth, and covered in certain parts with enamel, belong, after the Placoides, to the oldest forms of fossil fishes; their living representatives are still found in two genera, theßichir of the Nile and Senegal, and the Lepidosteus of Ohio. f [The polishing slate of Bilin is stated by M. Ehrenberg to form a series of strata fourteen feet in thickness, entirely made up of the siliceous shells of Gaillonellce, of such extreme minuteness, that a cubic inch of the stone contains forty-one thousand millions! The Bergmehl (moun- tain-meal or fossil farina), of San Fiora, in Tuscany, is one mass of animalcilites. See the interesting work of G. A. Mantell, On the Medals of Creation, vol. i. p. 223.]—Tr.
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