ACCOUNT OF THE VOLCANIC FORMATIONS NEAR THE RHINE.

_(From a Correspondent.)_


There is a volcanic country on the left bank between Remagen and
Andernach, highly interesting to the naturalist, but I believe not
visited by the generality of travellers. The late accounts, however, of
the formations of a similar kind in Auvergne and Clermont, in the centre
of France, and the speculations to which these phenomena have given
rise, determined me to explore this district whilst I was in the
neighbourhood. Bidding adieu, therefore, to the green little island of
Nonnenworth, I made the journey to Brohl, a convenient day's walk of
sixteen miles, passing through Oberwinter, Remagen, and Breysig, and the
other white and slated villages that enliven the river. It is here the
valley of the Rhine narrows, and the succession of ridges and dales
which the road skirts, are sometimes entirely barren, at others thickly
covered with vines and fruit-trees. Though the former plant is pleasing
in the tints of its leaf, and in the idea of cultivation and plenty that
its thick plantations present, yet there is a stiffness in the
regularity in which it grows, propped up by sticks; and it is so short,
that one's fancy as to its luxuriance, (especially if formed from such
poetry as _Childe Harold_,) is certainly disappointed. I made a
digression from the road up the little river Aar, which falls into the
Rhine near Sinzig. A more striking picture you cannot imagine. The
stream is remarkably clear and rapid, the bottom rocky, and its banks,
for a considerable distance, are literally perpendicular rocks. The Aar
is a perfect specimen of the mountain torrent; it rises in the Eiffel
mountains; and, I am told, in the winter does much mischief by
inundations. It put me in mind of the Welsh rivulets, particularly some