46 On tlhc Styles of Building in ancient Italy, and 



in the court of the museum at Naples, which is of considerable 

 size, and, being partly cut up, appears to be very fine. 



Basalt, called also by the Greeks \ikg Szauvirrig, was only 

 used in Rome for statues and vases. It was found in Ethiopia ; 

 but Jarge masses of it are very rare. Pliny (xxxvi. 7.) informs 

 us, that the largest piece known in his time was the statue of the 

 Nile with sixteen infants round it, which is well known in the 

 Vatican Museum, and was formerly kept in the Temple of Peace, 

 that great repository of art and literature. By far the largest 

 pieces known, however, are two statues in the gallery at Parma, 

 or rather colossal fragments, from the Farnese Gardens on 

 the Palatine at Rome. The one represents Hercules, and the 

 other Bacchus supported by a Faun. They must be at least ten 

 feet high and of proportional size. Two fine lavers for bathing 

 are preserved in the Vatican of this material ; and in the Church 

 of St Januarius at Naples is a splendid Bacchanalian font 

 carved in green basalt, which belonged to a temple in Egypt. 

 Ferber enumerates no less than ten species of ancient basalt, 

 but which, I suspect, it would be difficult distinctly to recognize. 

 One variety must be necessarily distinguished from the com- 

 mon or grayish black ; it is of a peculiar and lively green, and of 

 extreme hardness. There is a very fine example of it in the 

 bust of Scipio Africanus in the casino of the Rospigliosi palace 

 at Rome. The two Egyptian lions at the foot of the Capitol 

 stairs are generally referred to as the principal specimens of 

 the true basalts, but are somewhat anomalous. They have red 

 veins passing through them, which Ferber considers as granite; 

 but I conjecture that they are probably merely ironshot, and 

 cannot be considered a separate species. When artists wish to 

 repair Egyptian basaltic statues they employ the lava of the 

 Coulee at Capo di Bove.* Is not this alone sufficient to ex- 

 hibit the utter absurdity of the Wernerian hypothesis, which, 

 while its most strenuous supporters have been forced to consi- 

 der the latter a true lava, have pronounced the former an 

 aqueous deposite ? A substance described by antiquaries as 

 nearly allied to basalt is the lapis obsianus, the obsidian of the 

 moderns, which was sculptured by the Egyptians into figures 

 of gods, &c I imagine that Ferber means to describe the 



* Breislak, Campania, S;c, ii. 257. 



