LYELL. 345 



mansion, as it saves our returning. The wind is 

 whistling round and somewhat through it, but 

 Dr. Guiseppe, I hear, has made it weather tight. 

 There is no chimney and we have charcoal burners, 

 but if the wind always blows like this I am not, at 

 any rate, guaranteed from asphyxia." 



He got a list of one hundred and fifty shells of 

 the newer pliocene clay on which Etna rests. Nine- 

 tenths of them he found were of species belonging 

 to the present floor of the Mediterranean Sea, and 

 this, to his delight, confirmed what he wrote, and 

 what has already been alluded to, regarding this 

 deposit on a former occasion. At Bronte, Lyell saw 

 the place where a crowd assembled in 1842, to see 

 the lava flow into a great artificial reservoir of 

 water. The torrent of melted stone came forward 

 with a front of more than thirty feet high, and 

 falling suddenly into the water, produced for a 

 while no effect whatever, as if, as in the white hot 

 metal in Butigny's experiment, it required to cool 

 down before it could cause explosion. At length 

 it went off suddenly, and everybody but one or two 

 out of fifty or more in number was killed. 



During the years of his journeys in America and 

 Europe, Lyell had paid special attention to the 

 changes which were occurring on the surface of 

 the earth amongst the rocks and hills, valleys, 

 rivers, and sea-shores. He had dealt with inani- 

 mate nature largely. About the year 1859 ^e 

 began to consider the changes which have occurred 

 in the living things of the past, and to direct his 



