Volcanoes of Aiivergne, 61 



same channel, it ncrerthcless bears, in some parts of its course 

 the marks of considerable age. 



Before considering these, Mr Lyell entered into a short digression 

 to refute the doctrine of the mediaeval origin of the volcanoes near 

 Clermont, advanced by a writer in the Quarterly/ Review for Octo- 

 ber 1844 (p. 296), where it is pretended that Sidonius ApoUinaris, 

 Bishop of Clermont, who flourished at the close of the fifth century, 

 has borno explicit testimony to *' the volcanic eruption, the crum- 

 bling of the cones, and the heaping up of the showers of ashes and 

 scoria cast forth amidst their fires." The passages relied on, occur 

 in a letter from Sidonius to his contemporary, Mamertus, Bishop o£ 

 Vienne, in Dauphiny, written when Auvergne was threatened with 

 a fresh eruption of the Goths ; to avert which danger the Bishop 

 proposes to adopt certain forms of prayer (rogations or litanies), 

 which Mamertus had already introduced on the occasion of some 

 '* prodigies" which had happened in Dauphiny sixteen years before. 

 In alluding to these phenomena, Sidonius says that " the walls of 

 the city of Vienne were shaken by frequent earthquakes, many fires 

 broke out, and mounds of ashes were heaped up over the fallen cop- 

 ings of the walls." " Nam mode scena) moenium publicorum crebris 

 terra; motibus concutiebantur, nunc ignes ssepe flammati caducas cul- 

 minum cristas, superjecto favillarum monte tumulabant." Deer also 

 took refuge in the forum, and the people fled ; all but the Bishop, 

 who had a right to reckon on Divine protection, because, as Sidonius 

 reminds him, on a former occasion, the flames at his approach had 

 miraculously receded, out of reverence to his holy person. At the 

 time of the earthquake he (Mamertus) had told his people that their 

 repentant tears would extinguish the fires sooner than rivers of 

 water, and the steadfastness of their faith would cause the rocking 

 of the ground to cease. Sidonius finishes with asking the Bishop of 

 Vienne to send him some relics to make all secure. The style of 

 the whole epistle is so faulty, ambitious, and poetical, as to make it 

 difficult to know the exact value of the expressions, and dangerous 

 to found upon them any philosophical argument about natural events. 

 There is not a word about Auvergne, but simply an allusion to the 

 shocks which appear to have thrown down buildings and caused (as 

 usual in such cases where roofs fall in) great conflagration and heaps 

 of cinders. The terror of the wild animals when the earth rocks, 

 and their sensitiveness to the slightest movements, are well known. 

 Although the epistle proves Sidonius to have had a fair share of the 

 ci'edulity of his age, both in respect to miracles wrought in favour of 

 a contemporary saint and the efficacy of relics, it would be unfair to 

 charge him with a belief in the occurrence of a volcanic eruption at 

 or near the site of the city of Vienne, which the investigation of the 

 ablest government surveyors, to whom the construction of a geologi- 

 cal map of France has been intrusted, has entirely disproved. There 

 are, in lact, no monuments of volcanoes, ancient or modern, in Dau- 



