on the Surface of the Morea. 11 



logical researches, and for an explanation of the mixture of ma- 

 rine and fluviatile deposits in the same basin, to have been able 

 to collect the species which lived at the bottom of the sea, as this 

 outlet of fresh water rivers in the middle of gulfs is very com- 

 mon on all the coasts of Greece, especially in the Adriatic Gulf 

 and that of Lepanto ; and, according to M. Delcros, on the 

 coasts of Calabria. The result of this should be conical masses 

 of fluviatile deposits, in the midst of cotemporaneous marine de- 

 posits, as Montmartre with its gypsum and bones may be con- 

 ceived to be in the middle of the calcaire grossier. 



The plain of Argos is surrounded with these kephalovrysi, 

 whose waters produce pestilential marshes, which fable has per- 

 sonified in the Hydra of Lerna ; they are all at about the same 

 level. The highest are not more than 20 metres above the level 

 of the sea ; all of them proceed from the middle of fractured 

 beds of breccia and ferruginous conglomerate, which, in that 

 country, formed a talus on the shore, after the deposition of the 

 sub-appennine formation. It is a deposit cotemporaneous with 

 the Mediterranean osseous breccia, and the ferruginous alluvions 

 of the valleys of the Morea. 



It is remarkable that these springs issue not opposite the 

 opening of the valleys, but at the bottom of the buttresses 

 which project into the plain, as if these waters had more easily 

 opened a passage in the midst of the cracked beds of the com- 

 pact limestone, than in the recent deposits of the valleys. Thus, 

 the spring of Erasinus is situated at tiie extremity of a buttress, 

 where there are large caverns *, the floor of which is not more 

 than five metres above the actual opening of the spring. It may 

 be seen in a manner which admits of no doubt, that the river 

 flowed through these caverns, when the ferruginous alluvions 

 were deposited at the bottom ; and that it was not till after their 

 rise, and their destruction by the action of the sea, that the 

 waters abandoned the caverns to open a passage below the allu- 

 vium, or rather at the foot of ihefulaise which preceded that of 

 the present epoch. The sources of Lerna, Candia, Piada, and 

 the coast of Argolis, are in situations precisely similar. Seeing the 

 greater part of the springs of Greece break out on banks, and 



• We (lug to the depth of a metre and a half, without fmdiiigany thing but 

 the dung of bats. 



