No. V. — Temple of Jupiter Serapis, 277 



paper, that Pini attributes the migration or destruction of the 

 Lithophagi in the Bay of Baja to the volcanic salts thrown in 

 vast abundance from the Monte Nuovo. We would ask if they 

 found themselves better off in the wretched volcanic pool 

 which he has prepared for them ? Nor has Gothe much 

 mended the matter by assuming a directly opposite principle 

 to support this laboured theory. He supposes that the saltness 

 (which according to every known law must have rapidly di- 

 minished) was replenished by a constant infusion of those very 

 volcanic soluble compounds which Pini considered the agent 

 of the extirpation of the shell-fish in a large and open bay, 

 consisting, we suppose, of such salubrious ingredients as sul- 

 phate of lime and magnesia, or of sal ammoniac. We might, 

 from the great difficulty of the problem, tolerate some bold 

 statem.ents or rather opinions on the habitudes of the Liihopha^ 

 gi^ if the time of the supposed existence of the lake required 

 to be only very short. But when we consider the great size of 

 the perforations, which are four inches deep, and that these 

 appear by the best accounts to be formed in this very hard 

 and even quartzose marble by the mere action of a smooth 

 shell of the common degree of induration, which, like the 

 fall of a drop on a stone, must act " non vi, sed saepe caden- 

 do." — And farther, when we know that it could only be by 

 the complete range of the animal's natural term of growth that 

 these holes were by slow degrees completed, we shall not 

 wonder at the assertion of Spallanzani, * the best informed 

 observer in these branches of natural history that ever wrote 

 on the phenomena before us, who declares that he can prove 

 by " incontestable facts,"" that to form cells of such a depth, 

 the animals must have inhabited them for nearly half a cen- 

 tury. Why, after lasting half a century, the lake should not 

 have lasted to this hour, the theorists must make some addi- 

 tional assumption to explain. 



I have no wish to hold any one supporter of the lacustrine 

 hypothesis to these minuter details of the methods which may 

 probably have been employed by nature to produce the ima- 

 ginary effects, as the formation of the volcanic bed, the filling 

 with water, the stocking with fish, and the opportune disap- 



• Travels, i. 88. 



