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These Appenines have been called by some the Back Bone of Italy, as Varenius and others style the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, Back Bone of the World; and these, as they do, run in a long chain down the middle of the Peninsula they are placed in; but being rounded at top are supposed to be aquatick, while the Alps, Andes, &c. are of late acknowledged by philosophers to be volcanic, as the most lofty of them terminate in points of granite, wholly devoid of horizontal strata, and without petrifactions contained in them,
Posterity will be puzzled what to do with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions of a vain self-estimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build into stone walls, or burn into quicklime, as well as if the marble had never been blocked into the guise of human heads. But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endurance, this almost indestructibility, of a marble bust!
There were red-sashed "Fisher Lads" wading with butterfly-nets on their shoulders; there was a "Tying the Ribbon on Pussy's Neck"; there were portraits in oil and petrifactions in crayon, as hard and tight as the purses of those who had refused to accept them, leaving them upon their maker's hands because the likeness had failed.
To this subject of the petrifactions of Giezier, I may now add the information which we have received in consequence of a new voyage from this country to Iceland. When Sir Joseph Banks returned from his expedition to Iceland, he landed at this place; and, having brought specimens of the petrifications of Giezer, Dr Black and I first discovered that these were of a siliceous substance.
We shall afterwards have occasion to treat of that matter at large. It is sufficient here to observe, that our author finds occasion to generalise the formation of those petrifactions with the flintifications in calcareous and gypseous bodies.
The existence of the custom was confirmed by other persons present, from their own observation or experience. Yet, what if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during winter a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions?
I do not mean to say, that, in this particular case now described, the evidence of that truth peculiarly appears; but that, from the general nature of mineral veins breaking and traversing the solid strata of the globe, no other conclusion can be formed; and that in the particulars of this example there is nothing that could lead us to suppose any other origin to the petrifactions contained in this vein of stinking lime-stone.
We observed, that the vegetation was more brilliant, wherever the Alpine limestone was covered by a quartzose sandstone without petrifactions, and very different from the breccia of the sea-coast. The cause of this phenomenon depends probably not so much on the nature of the ground, as on the greater humidity of the soil.
A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles, and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was beneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and his brood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech; viz. by making petrifactions of them.
What did I know about petrifactions following the sea? Petrifaction! There was no such word in my language! I knew about putrefaction, though! I thought it was a stone; so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture." And now he had a theory of his own, which I did not quite grasp, except that the trees had not "grewed" there.
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