ITALY. LETTER V. 



collective burden and prefTure of a large {tone- 

 built city, have lowered and funk the yielding 

 fwampy Aground whereupon it (lands * ? 



The quarry-ftones ufed at Venice in the ma- 

 fonry of churches and palaces, private houfes 

 being commonly built of brick, are a white lime- 

 ftone, brought hither from Iftria, and called Ptetra 

 d'lftria. Among them are great numbers of 

 jftalactites, of a compact contexture, and of confi- 

 derable bignefs. They are very common in the 



* No, Mr. Ferber ! as I have no national reafon, either to 

 fupport the pretended diminution of the fea level, or to fink 

 cities on its behalf, I rather plainly conceive why the fea- 

 water and its level is conftantly increafing upon the land, and 

 unconcernedly agree that really it is fo in faft. The rivers, 

 difemboguing into the fea, continually carry along with them 

 the finds and clay, which rain, fnow-water, and torrents, 

 have wafhed down from the higher countries. The fea 

 conftantly beats the fteeper mores, and tumbles them down ; 

 large rocks and iflands have difappeared ; others, and very 

 large ones, have been raifed. The coral-rocks, and (hell 



and oyfter-banks, are ever increafing, Undoubted fails, 



whofe effect on the level of the feas and the ocean may be 

 very flow, but become fenfible in the progrefs of time. 

 And fo it is found, in faft, not only at Venice and in the 

 Adriatic fea, in many places which have been pointed out 

 by Mr. Manfredi, Zendrini, Vitaliano Donati, and Alberto Fonts. 

 (Viaggt di Dalmazia, vol. ii. p. 119.) but likewife in the 

 Mediterranean, near Baja and Puzzuolo, and on the fhore of 

 Holland ; where old Roman buildings, villa's, temples, and 

 fortifications, are covered by the overflowing heightened level 

 f the fea, 



D caverns 



