188 



Among the numerous points of interest none was more 

 remarkable than the bakery, where not long ago the ex- 

 cavators discovered in an oven eighty-one loaves of bread, 

 whole and hard though somewhat blackened. Bill boards 

 were used extensively in ancient Pompeii, not only to 

 announce amusements but to proclaim candidates for office, 

 advertise lost goods and the like. The Pompeian dwell- 

 inofs were next described and some of the customs of the 

 people. Art, the speaker thought, never attaiued a high 

 standard in the cit}^ though there were very many art 

 works of one kind and another. The ruins of the two the- 

 atres and the amphitheatre w^ere described, and the account 

 of Pompeii closed with a description of an imaginary fune- 

 ral conducted after the custom of those days. Mt, Vesu- 

 vius was then sketched together with some of the more 

 important of tho numerous eruptions which have occurred 

 during the Christian era. The eruption of a. d. 79 was 

 probably the most destructive. It is not believed that a 

 particle of lava flowed from the volcano at this time, but 

 that Pompeii was buried with hot ashes and scoricne, and 

 Herculaneum with substantially the same material though 

 it was often mixed with vapor forming a soft running mud 

 which eventually hardened. The eruption of 1631 was 

 also very destructive, many thousand lives being lost. 

 During this eruption a stone weighing twenty-five tons 

 was thrown five miles. The eruption of 1794 was also 

 very destructive. Two days after the lava from this 

 eruption reached the ocean, the water one hundred yards 

 from shore was so hot that boats could not float in it, be- 

 cause the pitch in their seams would nit It at once. The 

 temperature of lava often exceeds 2000° F. Mr. Nevins 

 closed with an account of the experience of himself and 

 tNvo friends in ascending the cone of Vesuvius to the cra- 

 ter, during a stormy day in the spring of 1878. 



