248 Dr Charles Daubeny on the 



striking, the most varied, and, perhaps, altogether the most 

 instructive series of phenomena ; inasmuch as it has consti- 

 tuted a permanent vent for the products of the chemical ac- 

 tions going on in the interior of the globe, ever since the ces- 

 sation of those kindred phenomena which we read of as hav- 

 ing been displayed formerly within the compass of the Phle- 

 grean Fields, and which had rendered that district an object 

 of terror to the early Greeks, — invested their inhabitants, the 

 Cimmerians, with a kind of vague and mysterious awe, — and 

 led the poets to place the entrance to the infernal regions 

 amongst their caves and forests. 



But our knowledge of the subject would be incomplete, if 

 we did not extend our observation to such mountains as 

 Mount Vultur and Rocca Monfina. 



In the former of these we perceive a volcano which was 

 extinguished, as it were, by the very throes that accompa- 

 nied its birth ; for the volcanic energy which heaved up the 

 materials of which the mountain is composed, and produced 

 a crater in the midst of it, seems to have been expended in 

 that very effort, and never afterwards to have exhibited any 

 signs of vitality, either by emitting streams of lava or ejec- 

 tions of scoriae. 



It is an example, therefore, of a simple crater of elevation, 

 not converted, like Vesuvius, into a permanent volcano, by 

 having become the vent for successive eruptions of igneous 

 matter at any period subsequent to its formation. 



In Rocca Monfina, on the other hand, we are enabled to 

 observe the precise agents which Nature calls into operation, 

 for the purpose of elevating volcanic hills in general, whether 

 the latter be destined to remain merely as monuments of 

 what she had accomplished at a distant period of time, or to 

 serve likewise, in after ages, as chimneys for her subterra- 

 nean laboratory — the trachytic rock of Monte della Croce 

 being here seen actually protruding through the crater, in 

 the centre of the mountain, which it no doubt contributed to 

 upraise. 



Rocca Monfina also appears to have given oif one^, if not 



