Excerpt from Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Mountain-Building: Three Articles Published in the North American Review, 1869-1871 The titles placed at the head of this article indicate three as characteristic books as could he selected from among the mass of publications devoted either to earthquakes alone or to earthquakes and volcanoes conjointly. In the last one on the list we have a fair specimen of a class of books which are becoming quite common, which mostly originate in France, are translated in England, and are reprinted here, and which, while pretending to be scientific, are, in reality, as far from having any claim to that character as possible. The principle on which these books are got up seems to be this: A number of showily designed and elegantly engraved wood-cuts are manufactured, and then some scientific penny-a-liner is hired to put together a text to match the pictures, no time being allowed for doing the work properly, even if the person selected were competent, which is rarely the case, the dominating idea being, evidently, to produce something which a not very critical public shall be tempted into buying, on account of the beauty of its mechanical execution, and with the incidental advantage of getting something scientific into the bargain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.