^64 COSMOS. 



the intermediate layers of gneiss or mica -slate. Both cases 

 presuppose a simultaneous, but heterogeneous process of trans- 

 formation. In Attica, in the Island of Eubea, and in the 

 Peloponnesus, it has been remarked, " that the limestone, when 

 superposed on mica-slate, is beautiful and crystalline in propor- 

 tion to the purity of the latter substance, and to the smallncss 

 of its argillaceous contents ; and, as is well known, this rock, 

 together with beds of gneiss, appears at many points, at a con- 

 siderable depth below the surface, in the islands of Paros and 

 Antiparos."* We may here infer the existence of an imper- 

 fectly metamorphosed flotz formation, if faith can be yielded 

 to the testimony of Origen, according to whom, the ancient 

 Eleatic, Xenophanes of Colophon,f (who supposed the whole 

 earth's crust to have been once covered by the sea,) declared 

 that marine fossils had been found in the quarries of Syracuse, 

 and the impression of a fish (a sardine) in the deepest rocks 

 of Paros. The Carrara or Luna marble quarries, which con- 

 stituted the principal source from which statuary marble was 

 derived, even prior to the time of Augustus, and which will 

 probably continue to do so until the quarries of Paros shall be 

 re-opened, are beds of calcareous sandstone macigno altered 

 by plutonic action, and occurring in the insulated mountain 

 of Apuana, between gneiss-like mica and talcose schist.'}" 

 Whether at some points granular limestone may not have 

 been formed m the interior of the earth, and been raised by 

 gneiss and syenite to the surface, where it forms vein-like 



* Leop. von Buch, Descr. des Canaries, p. 394 ; Fiedler, Reise durch 

 das Konigreich Grieclienland, th. ii. s. 181, 190, und 516. 



+ I have previously alluded to the remarkable passage in Origcn's 

 Philosophumena, cap. 14, (Opera, ed. Delarue, t. i. p. 893). From the 

 whole context it seems very improbable that Xenophanes meant an 

 impression of a laurel (-VTTOV Saline;) instead of an impression of a fish 

 (TV-OV d0i>j/<;). Delarue is wrong in blaming the correction of Jacob 

 Gronovius in changing the laurel into a sardel. The petrifaction of 

 a fish is also much more probable than the natural picture of Silenus, 

 which, according to Pliny (lib. xxxvi. 5) the quarry-men are stated to- 

 have met with in Parian marble from Mount Marpessos. Servius ad 

 Viry. JEn., vi. 471. 



On the geognostic relations of Carrara (The City of the Moon, 

 Strabo, lib. v. p. 222), see Savi, Osservazioni sui terreni anticlii Tos- 

 cani, in the Nuovo Giorndle de' Lellerati di Pisa, and Hoffmann, in 

 Karsten's Archiv fur Mineralogie, bd. vi. s. 258-263, as well as in hia 

 Geogn. Reise durch Italien, s. 244-265. 



