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62  ANNUAL REGISTER For the YEAR 1772.  63

NATURAL HISTORY.

Remarks upon the Nature of the Soil of Naples, and its Neighbourhood; in a Letter from the Honourable William Hamilton, His Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary at Naples, to Mathew Maty, M. D. Sec. R. S.

[Read Jan. 10. 17. 24. 1771.]

Naples, Oct. 16, 1770.

SIR,
ACCORDING to your desire, I lose no time in sending you such further remarks as I have been making with some diligence, for six years past, in the compass of twenty miles or more, round this capital. By accompanying these remarks with a map of the country I describe, and with the specimens of different matters that compose the most remarkable spots of it, I do not doubt but that I shall convince you, as I am myself convinced, that the whole circuit (so far as I have examined) within the boundaries marked in the map, is wholly and totally the production of subterraneous fires; and that most probably the sea formerly reached the mountains that lie behind Capua and Caserta, and are a continuation of the Apennines. If I may be allowed to compare small things with great, I imagine the subterraneous fires to have worked in this country under the bottom of the sea, as moles in a field, throwing up here and there a hillock, and that the matter thrown out of some of these hillocks formed into settled volcanos, filling up the space between one and the other, has composed this part of the continent, and many of the islands adjoining.

From the obsevations I have made upon mount Etna, Vesuvius, and its neighbourhood, I dare say, that, after a careful examination, most mountains that are, or have been volcanos, would be found to owe their existence to subterraneous fire; the direct reverse of what I find the commonly received opinion.

Nature, though varied, is certainly in general uniform in her operations; and I cannot conceive that two such considerable volcanos as Etna and Vesuvius should have been formed otherwise, than every other considerable volcano of the known world. I do not wonder that so little progress has been made in the improvement of natural history, and particularly in that branch of it which regards the theory of the earth; nature acts slowly, it is difficult to catch her in the fact. Those who have made this subject their study have, without scruple, undertaken at once, to write the natural history of a whole province, or of an entire continent; not reflecting, that the longest life of man scarcely affords him time to give a perfect one of the smallest insect.

I am sensible of what I undertake in giving you, Sir, even a very imperfect account of the nature of the foil of a little more than twenty miles round Naples: yet I flatter myself that my remarks, such as they are, may be of some use to any one hereafter, who may have leisure and inclination to follow them up. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies offers certainly the fairest field for observations of this kind, of any in the whole world; here are volcanos existing in their full force, some on their decline, and others totally extinct.

To begin with some degree of order, which is really difficult in the variety of matter that occurs to my mind, I will first mention the basis on which I found all my conjectures. It is the nature of the soil that covers the ancient towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the interior and exterior form of the new mountain, near Puzzole, with the fort of materials of which it is composed. It cannot be denied that Herculaneum and Pompeii flood once above ground; though now, the former is in no part less than seventy feet, and in some parts one hundred and twelve feet, below the present surface of the earth; and the latter is buried ten or twelve feet deep, more or less. As we know from the very accurate account given by Pliny the younger, to Tacitus, and from the accounts of other contemporary authors, that these towns were buried by an eruption of mount Vesuvius in the time of Titus; it must be allowed, that whatever matter lies between these cities and the present surface of the earth over them, must have been produced since the year 79 of the Christian era, the date of that formidable eruption.

Pompeii, which is situated at a much greater distance from the volcano than Herculaneum, has felt the effects of a single eruption only; it is covered with white pumice stones mixed with fragments of lava and burnt matter, large and small; the pumice is very light, but I have found some of the fragments of lava and cinders there, weighing eight pounds. I have often wondered that such weighty bodies could have been carried to such a distance (for Pompeii cannot be less than five miles, in a strait line, from the mouth of Vesuvius). Every observation confirms the fall of this horrid shower over the unfortunate city of Pompeii, and that few of its inhabitants had dared to venture out of their houses; for in many of those which have been already cleared, skeletons have been found, some with gold rings, ear rings, and bracelets. I have been present at the discovery of several human skeletons myself' and under a vaulted arch, about two years ago, at Pompeii, I saw the bones of a man and a horse taken up, with the fragments of the horse's furniture, which has been ornamented with false gems set in bronze. The skulls of some skeletons found in the streets had been evidently fractured by the fall of the stones. His Sicilian majesty's excavations are confined to this spot at present; and the curious in antiquity may expect hereafter, from so rich a mine, ample matter for their dissertations: but I will confine myself to such observations only as relate to my present subject.

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