274 Mr Forbes's Physical Notices of the Bay of Naples. 



and particularly supported by Mr Play fair, as confirmatory of 

 the splendid Huttonian theory, which he undertook so ably to 

 illustrate.* To the former of these opinions has been object- 

 ed, the impossibility of any partial rise of the level of the wa- 

 ters of the globe, which are in any way connected with the 

 great ocean, and that we have no reason to admit such a gene- 

 ral rise over the surface of the globe, which could alone ex- 

 plain a few such insulated facts. Against the second explana- 

 tion it has been urged, that the temple would not now have 

 been standing if it had been thus shaken about by earth- 

 quakes, or at least the pillars must have been put off the per- 

 pendicular : And farther, that in all probability the spring of 

 medicinal water must have been dried up by such a natural 

 convulsion. 



The third and fourth explanations, which, from their extra- 

 vagance, we class together, have received more formal refuta- 

 tions than they deserve. Spallanzani, apparently in a fit of 

 despair and nonchalance, suggests, that the columns were per- 

 haps accidentally buried in the sea, and then dug up and em- 

 ployed in the temple. But will any man in his senses believe, 

 that three pillars could by accident have been worn in places 

 corresponding precisely in each, when they were finally set 

 up in their new situation ; or that, if they had once formed 

 part of a temple now covered, and had been thus fished out, 

 they would have been employed in an edifice of surpassing 

 grandeur, without even a covering of stucco or the very shells 

 being extracted from the holes ? Besides, fragments of pillars 

 were found in excavating the temple, which still lie on the 

 elevated platform, and are not only perforated in the whole 

 length of their exterior, but on the cross fracture, at right 

 angles to the axis of the pillar, another animal has fixed 

 itself, the Serpula, both the triquetra and contortuplicata 

 of Linnaeus ; the most satisfactory of all proofs that the 

 immersion of the temple succeeded its final ruin. The other 

 hypothesis, which is proposed by Raspe, the translator of 

 Ferber's letters, shows the most palpable ignorance of the 

 state of the facts ; he imagines that the stone may have been 

 perforated before it was cut into columns, an idea which I 

 • Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, § 397, p. 450. 



