360 Scientific Intelligence—Geology. 
ing flood carries with it everything that may impede its course, and 
woe to the unhappy settler whose house or grounds may lie within 
the influence of the overwhelming floods ! 
So little has as yet been ascertained respecting the climatology of - 
Western, North-Western, and Northern Australia, that it is not 
known whether they also are subject to these tremendous visitations ; 
but as we have reason to believe that the intertropical parts of the 
country are favoured with a more constant supply of rain, as well as 
a lower degree of temperature, it is probable that they do not there 
occur —(Vide Gould’s Birds of Australia,—a magnificent and 
important work, Price £100 sterling.) 
GHOLOGY. 
3. On the Volcanic Formations of the Alban Hills, near Rome. 
—Professor J. D. Forbes, ina memoir on the Alban Hills, thus sums 
up the general results of his observations :— 
“In the first place, it appears that the Alban volcano (for it is 
essentially one) has acted throughout a great period of time; for 
not only has it evidently repeatedly changed its form and materials of 
eruption, but it is surrounded by knolls of basaltic formations which 
seem to indicate very ancient and very repeated ejections, without 
taking the regular form of craters. Such are probably Monte 
Algido, Civita Lavinia, Monte Giove (Corioli), the Capuccini of 
Albano, Rocca Priore, Colonna, and perhaps even Capo di Bove, and 
several open craters, such as one a little below Albano, the Lago 
Cornufelle near Frascati, the Lake of Gabii, and one near Colonna, 
which, on the authority of Ponzi, appear to have ejected peperino. 
The horse-shoe form of the old crater of the Alban Mount, which, 
whether formed by the elevation process or not, appears to be com- 
posed of beds of basalt, lapilli, tuff, or peperino, and here and there 
of the lava called Sperone, gave way, like that of Somma, on the 
western or seaward side, and I cannot but think it in no small de- 
gree probable, that the vast lava beds which lie under Nemi and 
Genzano, and which dip at a small angle under Monte Cavo, are 
part of the dislocated walls of the ancient crater displaced by the 
convulsion which rent it on the western side, and which was accom- 
panied by a prodigious fluid discharge of peperino, which then 
formed the strata of La Riccia and Albano, and which, overwhelm- 
ing the broken-down wall of the ancient crater, formed at the same 
time the Monte Gentile, and the peperino beds above Nemi. © This 
is confirmed by the prodigious lava blocks imbedded in these rocks, 
which bespeak the violence of the convulsion during which they were 
formed, Ages later, the present summit of Monte Cavo and the crater 
of the Campo d’Annibale were formed, and the latter gave out its cur- 
