On some Points in the History and Formation of Etna
H. Abich · Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society · 1859
Your questions about Etna have carried me back to the pleasant time when I made repeated studies of that remarkable mountain, not having a presentiment of the occasion which I much later had of verifying and recognizing in another land the truth of those beautiful laws of nature, written so clearly in the configuration of the Val di Bove, and especially in the structure of the very body of Etna, visible on the slopes and steep declivities of that enormous chasm of subsidence, the Val di Bove. For, that it is indeed such, nobody will deny who has been enabled, by comparative researches in the whole circumference of the elliptical valley, to prove that idea of its formation,—an idea indeed which immediately suggests itself to the observer from the elevated edge of the Val di Bove on the border of the Piano del Lago or Schiena dell'Asino. You are struck by some particulars in my figure of the mountain in Pl. 8 of my ‘Views of Etna*,’ and you desire to know how far those lines pointed out in your copy of it are based upon direct observation? In general, I have to confess that, when tracing those dotted lines, I may have fogotten that it was not the right place, in a profile constructed by hypsometrical measurements only, to hint at theoretical views, and that it would have been better to suppress not only the dotted line, but also those lines indicating a stratification, and intended to express a