VOLCANOES. 239 



in Ischia, in the year 1302. But although Jorullo, which is 

 eighty miles from any active volcano, is in the strict sense of 

 the word a new mountain, it must not be compared with 

 Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuolo, which first appeared on the 19th 

 of September, 1538, and is rather to be classed amongst 

 craters of elevation. I believe that I have furnished a more 

 natural explanation of the eruption of the Mexican volcano, 

 in comparing its appearance to the elevation of the Hill of 

 Methone, now Methana, in the peninsula of Trcezen. The 

 description given by Strabo and Pausanias of this elevation, 

 led one of the Roman poets, most celebrated for his richness 

 of fancy, to develope views which agree in a remarkable 

 manner with the theory of modern geognosy. " Near Trrezen 

 is a tumulus, steep and devoid of trees, once a plain, now a 

 mountain. The vapours enclosed in dark caverns in vain seek 

 a passage by which they may escape. The heaving earth, 

 inflated by the force of the compressed vapours, expands like 

 a bladder filled with air, or like a goat-skin. The ground has 

 remained thus inflated, and the high projecting eminence has 

 been solidified by time into a naked rock." Thus pictu- 

 resquely, and, as analogous phenomena justify us in believing, 

 thus truly has Ovid described that great natural phenomenon 

 which occurred 282 years before our era, and consequently 

 45 years before the volcanic separation of Thera (Santorino) 

 and Therasia, between Trcezen and Epidaurus, on the same 

 spot where Russegger has found veins of trachyte.* 



* Ovid's description of the eruption of Methone (Metam., xv. pp. 

 296-306) : 



" Near Troezen stands a hill, exposed in air 

 To winter winds, of leafy shadows bare : 

 This once was level ground ; but (strange to tell) 

 Th' included vapours, that in caverns dwell, 

 Labouring with colic pangs, and close confined, 

 In vain sought issue for the rumbling wind : 

 Yet still they heaved for vent, and heaving still, 

 Enlarged the concave and shot up the hill, 

 As breath extends a bladder, or the skins 

 Qf goats are blown t' enclose the hoarded wines; 

 The mountain yet retains a mountain's face, 

 .And gathered rubbish heads the hollow space." 



Dryderis Translation. 



This lescriplion of a dome-shaped elevation on the continent is of 

 great importance in a geognostical point of view, and coincides to 3 re- 



