Abstract
(1) THE late Prof. H. J. Johnston-Lavis was an untiring worker, and the bibliography now so handsomely published is a monument to the thoroughness with which his studies were pursued. The Italian volcanoes, on account of their position in the heart of Mediterranean culture, and their consequent accessibility to every inquiring pilgrim who made his way to Rome, have formed, almost unaided, the foundation of the science of vulcanology. Sir William Hamilton, our Ambassador at the Court of Naples at the close of the eighteenth century, brought systematic and continuous observation to bear upon the phenomena of Vesuvius. Spallanzani, very little later, undertook the description of Sicily. The contemporaneous and acute researches of Faujas de Saint-Fond among the extinct volcanoes of France owed their influence on geological thought to the author's comparisons of chilled materials with the products of active cones in Italy. Werner of Freiberg, the exponent of cabinet geology, was defeated when his pupil von Buch travelled southward of the Alps. The bibliography of South Italian volcanoes, as we look back on memorable controversies, is indeed a conclave of great names. If we could rearrange the papers cited in the order of their dates, instead of the far more convenient author-system here employed, we should have a history of alarm and wonder-seeking, passing into more or less sober speculation, and finally into patient observation varied by exciting episodes.
(1) Bibliography of the Geology and Eruptive Phenomena of the More Important Volcanoes of Southern Italy.
Compiled with the assistance of Madame A. Johnston-Lavis by Prof. H. J. Johnston-Lavis. Second edition, completed after the author's death by Miss B. M. Stanton and edited with a preface and short life of the author by B. B. Woodward. Pp. xxiv + 374. (London: The University of London Press, Ltd., 1918.)
(2) Italian Mountain Geology.
By Dr. C. S. Du Riche Preller. Part i. The Piémontese Alps, Ligurian Apennines, and Apuan Alps. Pp. 1–99. Part ii. The Tuscan Subapennines and Elba. Pp. 101–92. (London: Dulau and Co., Ltd., 1918.) Price 2s. 6d. net each.
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COLE, G. (1) Bibliography of the Geology and Eruptive Phenomena of the More Important Volcanoes of Southern Italy (2) Italian Mountain Geology. Nature 101, 501 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/101501a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/101501a0
