276 Mr Forbes's Physical Notices of the Bay of Naples, 



buried, as far as regards the theoretical question ; but it is 

 surprising that Pini should appear rather to lean to the erup- 

 tion of the Monte Nuovo, which took place in 1538, since 

 which time one would expect to have received some account 

 of such strange phenomena as the theory assigns to this period. 

 Not contented by such a simple explanation as that a huge 

 wave might have been thrown into the bed prepared by the 

 eruption, a wave merely occasioned by a contemporaneous 

 commotion of the sea, it has been thought necessary to waste 

 much argument upon the proof of a more miraculous source, 

 namely, through the very Monte Nuovo itself, which certainly 

 did throw up water at the time, but must have been most sur- 

 prising in quantity, if such torrents were conveyed to the dis- 

 tance of an hour and a-half's walk from the mountain. Let 

 this pass, however, and see how the lake is to be stocked with 

 the fish. The theorist is not even here satisfied with the un- 

 warrantable assertion, that at the moment of a wave being pro- 

 jected into the bed prepared for it, a quantity of the germs of 

 the Mytili were floating in readiness to be wafted into their 

 new dwelling ; but he must make the unfortunate animalculae 

 pass through the bowels of the explosive volcano and reach 

 the temple along with the requisite supply of erupted water ! 

 He even enters into a variety of details to prove how the tem- 

 perature of the water fresh from the seat of volcanic fire should 

 be cool enough not to cook the embryo mytili *. It is then 

 presumed that the lake being once formed, the springs of fresh 

 water from the mountain of the Solfatara adjoining supplied 

 the waste by evaporation, whilst the animals commenced their 

 labours. It is rather amusing, however, to notice in this very 



• Lest the reader should think I am exaggerating when in fact I dwell 

 only lightly on the absurdities of the hypothesis, I refer him to the Me- 

 morie delfa Societa Italiana, ix. 221- — All the reasoning about the germs, 

 too, is a tissue of unwarrantable assumptions, the subject being still quite 

 obscure. These animals have in each individual the reproductive faculty ; 

 but how the young are sustained, whether they float about in the sea or 

 not, and how they commence their holes, are problems in zoology of which 

 we have no attempt at solution. The lacustrine theorists, in order to com- 

 plete their assumptions, have only to suppose with llondeletius that the sea 

 water lodging in rocks is actually transformed into Pholades. — See Mr 

 Stark's paper in the Edinburgh Transactions ^ x. 487. 



