Von Buch ("Description des Isles Canaries" page 324.) has classed all volcanoes under two heads, namely, CENTRAL VOLCANOES, round which numerous eruptions have taken place on all sides, in a manner almost regular, and VOLCANIC CHAINS.In the examples given of the first class, as far as position is concerned, I can see no grounds for their being called "central;" and the evidence of any difference in mineralogical nature between CENTRAL VOLCANOES and VOLCANIC CHAINS appears slight.No doubt some one island in most small volcanic archipelagoes is apt to be considerably higher than the others; and in a similar manner, whatever the cause may be, that on the same island one vent is generally higher than all the others.
Von Buch does not include in his class of volcanic chains small archipelagoes, in which the islands are admitted by him, as at the Azores, to be arranged in lines; but when viewing on a map of the world how perfect a series exists from a few volcanic islands placed in a row to a train of linear archipelagoes following each other in a straight line, and so on to a great wall like the Cordillera of America, it is difficult to believe that there exists any essential difference between short and long volcanic chains.Von Buch (Idem page 393.) states that his volcanic chains surmount, or are closely connected with, mountain-ranges of primary formation: but if trains of linear archipelagoes are, in the course of time, by the long-continued action of the elevatory and volcanic forces, converted into mountain-ranges, it would naturally result that the inferior primary rocks would often be uplifted and brought into view.
Some authors have remarked that volcanic islands occur scattered, though at very unequal distances, along the shores of the great continents, as if in some measure connected with them.In the case of Juan Fernandez, situated 330 miles from the coast of Chile, there was undoubtedly a connection between the volcanic forces acting under this island and under the continent, as was shown during the earthquake of 1835.The islands, moreover, of some of the small volcanic groups which thus border continents, are placed in lines, related to those along which the adjoining shores of the continents trend; I may instance the lines of intersection at the Galapagos, and at the Cape de Verde Archipelagoes, and the best marked line of the Canary Islands.If these facts be not merely accidental, we see that many scattered volcanic islands and small groups are related not only by proximity, but in the direction of the fissures of eruption to the neighbouring continents--a relation, which Von Buch considers, characteristic of his great volcanic chains.
In volcanic archipelagoes, the orifices are seldom in activity on more than one island at a time; and the greater eruptions usually recur only after long intervals.Observing the number of craters, that are usually found on each island of a group, and the vast amount of matter which has been erupted from them, one is led to attribute a high antiquity even to those groups, which appear, like the Galapagos, to be of comparatively recent origin.This conclusion accords with the prodigious amount of degradation, by the slow action of the sea, which their originally sloping coasts must have suffered, when they are worn back, as is so often the case, into grand precipices.We ought not, however, to suppose, in hardly any instance, that the whole body of matter, forming a volcanic island, has been erupted at the level, on which it now stands: the number of dikes, which seem invariably to intersect the interior parts of every volcano, show, on the principles explained by M.Elie de Beaumont, that the whole mass has been uplifted and fissured.A connection, moreover, between volcanic eruptions and contemporaneous elevations in mass has, I think, been shown to exist in my work on Coral-Reefs, both from the frequent presence of upraised organic remains, and from the structure of the accompanying coral-reefs.(A similar conclusion is forced on us, by the phenomena, which accompanied the earthquake of 1835, at Concepcion, and which are detailed in my paper (volume 5 page 601) in the "Geological Transactions.") Finally, I may remark, that in the same Archipelago, eruptions have taken place within the historical period on more than one of the parallel lines of fissure: thus, at the Galapagos Archipelago, eruptions have taken place from a vent on Narborough Island, and from one on Albemarle Island, which vents do not fall on the same line; at the Canary Islands, eruptions have taken place in Teneriffe and Lanzarote; and at the Azores, on the three parallel lines of Pico, St.Jorge, and Terceira.Believing that a mountain-axis differs essentially from a volcano, only in plutonic rocks having been injected, instead of volcanic matter having been ejected, this appears to me an interesting circumstance; for we may infer from it as probable, that in the elevation of a mountain-chain, two or more of the parallel lines forming it may be upraised and injected within the same geological period.