40 



brings up substances, which are of the most beautiful 

 colours : of as fine a scarlet, purple, or blue, as the 

 finest paint could make them. Those of a bright yel- 

 low are very common ; but the green or snow-white 

 more rare. These coloured substances seem sometimes 

 to make up the whole bottom. But they are more fre- 

 quently found on other things, as upon mud, corals, or 

 larger pieces of shells, in the manner of tartarons crusts. 

 And their colours are not merely superficial or transient ; 

 but many of them are so permanent, that they may be 

 preserved in white w;ax, and when thus examined, they 

 appear equal to paints of the finest kind. 



There is very little difference between the bottom of 

 the Adriatic sea, and the surface of the neighbouring 

 countries. There are at the bottom of the water, moun- 

 tains, plains, vallies, arid caverns, just as upon the land. 

 The soil consists of different strata planted one upon 

 another; and for the most part corresponds to those of 

 the rock, islands, and neighbouring continents. They 

 contain stones of different sorts, minerals, metals, vari- 

 ous petrified bodies, pumice-stones, and lavas formed by 

 volcanoes. Istria, Dalmatia, Albania, and other adja* 

 cent countries, as well as the rocks, the islands, and the 

 bottom of the Adriatic sea, consist of a mass of white mar- 

 ble, of an uniform grain, and of almost an equal hardness. 

 This vast bed of marble, in many places, under both the 

 earth and the sea,, is interrupted by several other kinds 

 of marble, and covered by a great variety of bodies. 

 The variety of these soils under the sea is remarkable : 

 it is to this are owing the varieties of plants and animals 

 found at the bottom of the sea. Some places are inha- 

 bited by a great number of different species of plants 

 and animals, in others only some particular species are 

 found, and in others neither plants nor animals. These 

 observations not only point out to us the resemblance 

 between the surface of the earth, and the bottom of the 

 sea* but likewise one cause of the varieties which are 

 observed in the distribution of the marine fossils found 

 in the earth. 



