The supposed recent Origin of America refuted.

A very ingenious naturalist, Mr Smith Barton, has said, with much justice, “I can only consider as puerile, and in no way proved by natural evidence, the supposition that a great part of America has emerged from the bosom of the waters at a later period than the other continents .”

May I be permitted to quote a passage from a memoir which I composed, on the Native Tribes of America . “Justly celebrated writers have often repeated, that America is, in every sense of the word, a New Continent.

That richness of vegetation, that mass of immense rivers, those great volcanoes, always in action, announce, say they, that the earth, incessantly trembling and not entirely dry, is less removed from the original chaotic state than in the old world.

Long before my voyage, such ideas appeared to me as unphilosophical as opposed to the generally known laws of physics.

These images of youth and disorder, as well as of dryness and progressive loss of vigour in the Earth, as it grows old, could only originate with those who amuse themselves with seeking out contrasts between the two hemispheres, and do not comprehend under a general view the constitution of our planet.

Will it be said that the southern part of Italy is a newer country than Lombardy, because it is almost continually shaken by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?

Besides, our present volcanoes and earthquakes are slight phenomena compared with those revolutions of nature which the geologist must suppose to have taken place in the days of the melting and cooling of the masses which have formed the mountains, when the Earth was yet in a state of chaos.

Different causes must make the effects of the energy of nature vary in different climates.

In the New World, the volcanoes, to the number of fifty-four, may perhaps have burnt longer, because the chain of lofty mountains in which they are situated is nearer the sea, and because this circumstance, and the perpetual snow which covers them, appear to modify the subterranean fire, in a manner as yet little appreciated.

Earthquakes and eruptions act there periodically.

At present physical disorder and political tranquility reign in the New Continent, while in the Old, the discords of the nations drive men to seek for rest in the bosom of nature.

Perhaps a time will come when one part of the world will take the place of the other in this singular contrast between physical and moral energy.

Volcanoes rest for ages, before they are again lighted up.

The opinion that, in the older regions, there ought to reign a certain peace in nature, is founded merely upon a play of our imagination.

One side of our planet can never be older than the other.

The islands produced by volcanoes, such as the Azores, or gradually formed by mollusca, like many islands of the Pacific Ocean, are in general more recent than the granite masses of the central chain of Europe.

A country of small extent, like Bohemia, and several valleys of the moon, circularly inclosed by mountains, may long remain covered with water, in consequence of partial inundations, and form a lake.

After the waters have been entirely drained off, the name of newly-formed land might by metaphor be given to this, where vegetation would establish itself by degrees.

But an aquatic envelope, such as the geologist figures to himself at the period of the formation of the secondary mountains, can only be supposed, consistently with the laws of hydrostatics, as existing at once in all parts of the world, and in all climates.

The sea could not remain on the vast plains of the Oronocco and Amazon, without, at the same time, ravaging the countries situated around the Baltic.

The concatenation and identity of the secondary strata near Carracas, in Thuringia, and in Lower Egypt, prove, as I have shewn in my Geological Picture of South America, that this great operation of nature has been performed at the same period over the whole earth. — Humboldt, Tableau de la Nature, tom. i. p. 133-139.

Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania, vol. i. p. 4.

Berliner Monatschrift, t. xv. p. 190.