TEANS ACTIONS. 57 



allowed to climb tall trees planted in rows for that pur- 

 pose, and the shoots from neighboring trees are interlaced 

 so as to form a net-work or vast arbor high over head. 

 The ground is cultivated with a variety of plants, and such 

 is the fertility of the soil and the power of the sun, that 

 good crops of grain are raised in the vineyards under a 

 depth of shade, which, in less favored climates, would ad- 

 mit the growth of no vegetation but spontaneous under- 

 wood. 



The immediate environs of Vesuvius, where the soil is 

 of unmixed and recent eruptive origin, possess the usual 

 fertility of volcanic earth, and the lavas and scoriae of this 

 mountain seem in general to yield to atmospheric influ- 

 ences and to become sufficiently disintegrated to admit of 

 cultivation sooner than those of Etna. The Etncean lava 

 of 1669, as well as the beds of volcanic sand and ashes 

 deposited near the outlet from which that terrible cur- 

 rent issued forth, seem almost as bare and as black as on. 

 the day of the eruption, while ejections from Vesuvius, of 

 a much later date if we can trust the report of the inhabi- 

 tants, are already covered with vegetation. The soil upon 

 the flanks of these mountains presents a character to which 

 we have, at least on this side of the Rocky Mountains, 

 nothing analogous, as all our igneous rocks and the earths 

 formed by this decomposition are of an earlier origin and 

 a difi'erent constitution. 



The configuration of the surface in that portion of cen- 

 tral Italy which lies east of the Apennines presents more 

 points of analogy with our own geography. There is less 

 of widely extended plain than upon the western shores of 

 the peninsula, the mountains rise more gradually from the 

 sea, and the landscape is chequered with liill and knoll and 

 winding rivulet and narrow intervale, but the olyects and 

 processes of rural industry are much the same as on the 

 opposite slope of the mountains. 



Proceeding northwards we enter the vast alluvial plains 



