Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, Volume 5

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Harper & brothers, 1868

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Page 445 - Vieron salir gran fuego de la sierra de la isla de Tenerife, que es muy alta en gran manera.
Page 386 - Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1842, and to Oregon and North California in 1843-4.
Page 126 - The correspondence, and at the same time opposition, of the southern hemisphere is also shewn from the time of maximum and minimum range. When the sun is in the northern signs of the zodiac, the range is a maximum in the northern, and a minimum in the southern hemisphere ; and when the sun is in the southern signs, the reverse takes place. The diurnal variation is so small, that the ordinary compass-needle is not delicate enough to shew it.
Page 83 - ... remarkable fact which has been established, that the magnetic force is greater in both the northern and southern hemispheres in the months of December, January, and February, when the sun is nearest to the earth, than in those of May, June, and July, when he is most distant from it ; •whereas if the effect were due to temperature, the two hemispheres should be oppositely instead of similarly affected in each of the two periods referred to.
Page 294 - ... the most horrible and complicated imprecations, prophesying that first of all the house would be devoured by flames which would issue from the earth, and that afterwards the surrounding air would become cooled to such a degree that the neighbouring mountains would remain eternally covered with snow and ice. The former of these maledictions having had such fatal consequences, the lower class of Indians already see in the gradual cooling of the volcano, the presage of a perpetual winter.
Page 292 - I have elsewhere described8 by the circumstance that it was, as is usually the case, accompanied by earthquakes, which were not felt in the mountain city in January, 1784. The eruption of the new volcano, about 3 o'clock in the morning, was foretold the day before by a phenomenon which, in other eruptions, .does not indicate their commencement but their conclusion. At the point where the great volcano now stands, there was formerly a thick wood of the Guayava (Psidium pyriferum), so much valued by...
Page 331 - ... structure of a volcanic district becomes obscured, and finally obliterated : so near to this last stage is St. Helena, that I believe no one has hitherto suspected that the central ridge or axis of the island is the last wreck of the crater, whence the most modern volcanic streams were poured forth. The great hollow space or valley southward of the central curved ridge, across which the half of the crater must once have extended, is formed of bare...
Page 69 - ... by absolute measurements, we are not only enabled to compare numerically with one another the results of experiments made in the most distant parts of the globe, with apparatus not previously compared, but we also furnish the means of comparing hereafter the intensity of the force which exists at the present epoch with that which may be found at future periods.
Page 379 - ... beautiful country. The colossal mountains covered with perpetual snow seem as it were, to rise out of a plain. The spectator confounds the ridge of the soft swelling land, the elevated plain, with the plain of the low lands, and it is only from the change of climate, the lowering of the temperature, under the same degree of latitude, that he is reminded of the height to which he has ascended.
Page 128 - That supposing the earth to be concave, with a less globe included, in order to make that inner globe capable of being inhabited, there might not improbably be contained some luminous medium between the balls, so as to make a perpetual day below.

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