Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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weather, fossils and early man, it is Kircher's understanding of
volcanoes and the illustrations of them that particularly caught
the imagination of the fellow scholars and the narrow band of
literate Europeans in his day. The English edition extracted the
chapters on volcanoes, and added 'a scatter'd Collection of Hist-
orical Relations by others, of most remarkable passages'. Published
as it was three years after much of London was burnt to the
ground in 1666, it was prefaced by a poem that attempted to put
the capital's recent agonies into perspective:
Athanasius Kircher,
Mount Etna erupting
in 1637, as seen by the
author
, 1637.
None sadlier knows the unresisted Ire,
Then [
sic
] Thou, Poor London! of th'all raging Fire.
But these occasion'd kindlings are but Blazes,
