on the Materials used in the city of Home. 31 



to expose the plagiarism of Mr Ramage, and knowing how 

 little justice he had done to the Italian work, and flatter- 

 ing myself that I could add some scientific details of interest, 

 especially to the part of the work which treats of ornamental 

 stones, I resolved upon transmitting to you the present paper, 

 passing lightly over the ground which Mr It. has already pre- 

 occupied in so strange a manner. I shall therefore make, 

 Jirst, a few remarks on the construction of edifices of various 



calcarea compatta. La calce tratta da questa ultima pietra serviva per la 

 costruzione de' muri, quella, che si traeva dalle pietre porose usavasi negl* 

 intonachi." — Nibby. " The mortar was made as it is at present, either 

 from common limestone or from a stone which Vitruvius calls silex, and 

 which may perhaps correspond with our compact calcareous limestone. * 

 That which was obtained from the last was employed in the construction 

 of walls, while the other was used as plaster." — Ramage. As to the 

 translator's interpolations, the first occurs at the bottom of page 246 

 and top of 247, in which he mentions that the mortar is so hard, that 

 at Baise the foundations of the houses below water are preserved, while 

 those on the shore have " entirely disappeared," which by the way is not 

 correct ; but he has omitted by far the most curious fact, and which most 

 belongs to his argument, that the sea has washed out the stones formed in 

 squares of a few inches, and left the mortar projecting in the most curious 

 manner, forming cells of a honey-comb appearance. His next original 

 lucubration proves that he is not a very profound classical scholar. He 

 says that the caves hollowed out of tufa, near Naples, are supposed to 

 have been inhabited by the " Cummelii mentioned by Homer." — With- 

 out supposing that the translator is able to read Homer, he might have 

 learned from Eustace, Forsyth, and every traveller, not to say every six- 

 penny guide-book, that the " Cummelii" are inventions of his own brain, 

 and that it is of the Cimmerians Ki/u/uigtot, Odyss. 11, 14. that Homer 

 speaks. The next and hist original sentence of our author is at page 249, in 

 which, as usual, he falls into another error ; he says, that the Romans em- 

 ployed large quadrilateral masses of travertine in their edifices without ce- 

 ment. Now, it is quite certain that the Romans employed cement even 

 when the largest blocks of this stone were used, though it may escape a 

 superficial observer, (such as I presume Mr R. to be.) ( I have seen the 

 mortar perfectly distinct in the Colisseum, which I examined with that 

 particular view. We see then that Mr C. T. R., A. M., is not very fit to 

 come out of leading strings ; and if he will translate, he will find much 

 good employment in that line, but let him candidly own that he does so, 

 and avoid mangling papers as he has done this one, by cutting off all the 

 classical allusions with which the erudite antiquary, whose steps he pur- 

 sued (" haud passibus <Equis,") illustrates his work. 



* A Mineralogical tautology of Mr Ramage. 



