122 Notice of Floating Islands: 
ArT. XV.—Notice of Floating Islands. 
NewsuryportT, Oct. 31, 1826. 
TO THE EDITOR. 
DEAR 
Sir 
Ir the Toliowing remarks will answer any valuable pur~ 
pose, they are at your service ae insertion in your Journal 
of Science. os PETTINGALL, Jun. 
That a few floating reeds, upon a pond, should collect to- 
gether, and adhere with sufficient compactness to sustain 
small pieces of earth and decayed shrubs and plants, and 
thereby exhibit small clumps of vegetables moving on the 
water, is not surprising ; but that islands of any magnitude 
should be found in this vagrant state, has ever been consider- 
ed a subject of considerable curiosity. Passing over the 
mythological fiction of the floating Delos, as founded upon 
questionable evidence, and the island of Chemmis, with those 
called the Cyanean, reported as floating, by the less doubtful 
testimony of Herodotus, the first of which history gives a 
minute and Snes account, are those in Lake Vadi- 
, near Rome, (now called de Bassanello,) describ- 
ed by Pliny saajos uct Seneca. Pliny the younger, in the 
20th Letter of his 8th Book, gives a very interesting aetip- 
tion of the same, in which he mentions the circumstance of 
sheep, which, while grazing, imperceptibly fell upon some of 
these islands, lying on the borders of the lake, and were car- 
ried off by the wind, and borne to the opposite shore. It is 
also asserted by Boethius, that in Loch Lomond there are 
floating islands upon which cattle graze. * A few small ones, 
of the same description, are said to exist in a lake in the pro- 
‘vince of Honduras in America. These, the only instances 
which I can readily collect, serve to show that it is a subject 
of rare curiosity. 
Theisland, which I am about to describe, is situated nearly one 
mile south of the market-house in Newburyport, about two 
Stones cast from what is called Old-Town mec Ose in & 
* Upon nm turning to the Modern Geographical cata ¥ de not ~~. this 
alluded to; and if the account be fabulous, it Ben prove these objects of cu- 
Fiosity more rare, and thereby add to their interest. 
