Long-buried glassy lavas devitrify, or pass to a stony condition, under the unceasing action of underground waters; but their flow lines and perlitic and spherulitic structures remain to tell of their original state.

Ancient tuffs are known by the fragmental character of their volcanic material, even though they have been altered to firm rock.  Some remains of land animals and plants may be found imbedded to tell that the beds were laid in open air; while the remains of marine organisms would prove as surely that the tuffs were deposited in the sea.

In these ways ancient volcanoes have been recognized near Boston, in southeastern Pennsylvania, about Lake Superior, and in other regions of the United States.

THE LIFE HISTORY OF A VOLCANO

The invasion of a region by volcanic forces is attended by movements of the crust heralded by earthquakes.  A fissure or a pipe is opened and the building of the cone or the spreading of wide lava sheets is begun.

Volcanic cones.  The shape of a volcanic cone depends chiefly on the materials erupted.  Cones made of fragments may have sides as steep as the angle of repose, which in the case of coarse scoria is sometimes as high as thirty or forty degrees.  About the base of the mountain the finer materials erupted are spread in more gentle slopes, and are also washed forward by rains and streams.  The normal profile is thus a symmetric cone with a flaring base.

Cones built of lava vary in form according to the liquidity of the lava.  Domes of gentle slope, as those of Hawaii, for example, are formed of basalt, which flows to long distances before it congeals.  When superheated and emitted from many vents, this easily melted lava builds great plateaus, such as that of Iceland.  On the other hand, lavas less fusible, or poured out at a lower temperature, stiffen when they have flowed but a short distance, and accumulate in a steep cone.  Trachyte has been extruded in a state so viscid that it has formed steepsided domes like that of Sarcoui.

Most volcanoes are built, like Vesuvius, both of lava flows and of tuffs, and sections show that the structure of the cone consists of outward-dipping, alternating layers of lava, scoria, and ashes.

From time to time the cone is rent by the violence of explosions and by the weight of the column of lava in the pipe.  The fissures are filled with lava and some discharge on the sides of the mountain, building parasitic cones, while all form dikes, which strengthen the pile with ribs of hard rock and make it more difficult to rend.

Great catastrophes are recorded in the shape of some volcanoes which consist of a circular rim perhaps miles in diameter, inclosing a vast crater or a caldera within which small cones may rise.  We may infer that at some time the top of the mountain has been blown off, or has collapsed and been engulfed because some reservoir beneath had been emptied by long-continued eruptions.