196 Miscellanies. 
The jet of water, which at first was raised fourteen feet and two- 
thirds, has gradually subsided to eight feet. Its force is now so great 
that it brings up with it not only small pebbles, but fragments of lava, 
and tufa, one of the pieces of lava weighed two livres. Jn blasting 
the tufa for the establishment of baths, and other accommodations, 
the trunk of a eypress was discovered, still standing, charred upon the 
outside, but the interior was perfectly preserved. Its circumference 
was five feet and one third and height three feet and one third. It stood 
in a thin bed of vegetable earth, covered by different beds of voleanic 
tufa, was twenty feet and two thirds below the level of the sea, twen- 
ty-six feet and two-thirds below the surface of the ground, and five 
feet and one third below the formed upper surface of the tufa. 
This cypress, from its diameter, must have been at least an hun- 
dred years old at the time it was enclosed in the surrounding mass, 
which, in its nature and stratification, so much resembles that which’ 
covers Herculaneum, that it may with reason be supposed to be of 
the same epoch, or rather to bea part of the products of the eruption, 
which entombed the country south of the foot of Vesuvius, in a shower 
of volcanic substances. In the same bed with the cypress were found 
great numbers of snails (helix nemorata and h. decollata ;) also frag- 
ments of tiles and of pottery, undoubtedly of Roman origin, and 
like those found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
It is remarkable, that the outer part of the cypress is carbonized 
and the interior is uninjured, while at Pompeii and Herculaneum, 
even the large timbers are charred through the whole mass. ; 
This is probably owing to the cypress being in full vegetation when 
it was enveloped, and thus it is able to resist the heat of the lava, 
which is sufficient to carbonize only dead wood.—Bib. Univ. Mars, 
1833. 
12. Descent in diving bells—The Rev. Mr. Alden’s account of 
descents in a diving bell, (Am. Journal for July, 1832,) is translated 
into the Bibliotheque Universelle, and the translator, in a note, attri- 
butes the cure of Mr. Clifford’s rheumatism to the great heat pro- 
duced in the bell, and which is like a (steam?) vapor bath, and says 
that his twelve descents were almost equal to taking as many warm 
baths in the waters of Aix or Barrége. The translator once de- 
scended twenty five feet at Bordeaux, in a bell, with foar other per- 
sons, and the heat of their lamp, with that of respiration and that 
evolved by compression of the air, raised the thermometer, in three 
quarters of an hour, from 15° to 32° R. 
