NOTES. Ixxiii 



kind of phenomena of eruption belong the numerous but transitory insular eleva- 

 tions which were seen, in 1691, in the sea round the island of S.Jorge, and, in 

 1757, round San Miguel, for a few days only. The periodical swelling of the 

 sea-bottom, three or four miles west of the Caldeira das sete Cidades, producing 

 a larger island, and which was of somewhat longer duration (Sabrina), has been 

 already noticed (Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 252; English edition, p. 230). On the 

 elevation-crater of Astruni in the Phlegraan Fields, and " the trachytic mass 

 pushed up in its centre as an unopened bell-shaped hill," see Leop. von Buch, 

 in Poggendorffs Annalen, Bd. xxxvii. S. 171 and 182. Rocca Monfina (mea- 

 sured and drawn in Abich's Geol. Beob. iiber die vulkan. Erscheinungen in Unter- 

 und Mittel-Italien, 1841, Bd. i. S. 113, Tafel II.) is a fine crater of elevation. 



( 309 ) p. 226. Sartorius von Waltershausen, Physisch-geographische Skizze 

 von Island, 1847, S. 107. 



( 31 ) p. 227. It has been much debated what is the special locality in the 

 plain of Trcezene, or the peninsula of Methana, with which we should connect 

 the description of the Roman poet. My friend Ludwig Ross (the great investi- 

 gator of Grecian antiquity by the aid of many journeys) thinks that the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of Troezene offers no locality which can be identified with 

 the inflated hill, and that Ovid must have transferred his graphic description to 

 that plain by a poetic license. Ross writes : " To the south of the peninsula 

 of Methana, and to the east of the Troezenian plain, lies the island of Ka- 

 lauria, known as the place where Demosthenes, pressed by the Macedonians, 

 took the poison in the temple of Poseidon. A narrow strait divides the limestone 

 of Kalauria from the coast, and gives the town and island their present name 

 (from Tt6pos, a passage). In the middle of the sound, connected with Kalauria 

 by a low, and possibly originally artificial, dike, there is a small conical island, 

 in shape like an egg cut through its length. It is throughout volcanic, and 

 consists of greyish yellow, and yello'wish and reddish, trachyte, with interspersed 

 lava and scoria;. It is almost entirely without vegetation. The present town 

 of Poros is built on it, on the site of the ancient Kalauria. Its formation appears 

 quite similar to that of the more recent volcanic islands in the bay of Thera 

 (Santorin). Ovid, in his spirited description, has probably followed a Greek 

 model, or an ancient legend." (Ludw. Ross in a letter to myself in November 

 1845.) Virlet, as a member of the French scientific expedition, expressed the 

 opinion that the volcanic elevation had been a later addition to the trachytic 

 mass of the peninsula of Methana, and was to be found at its north-western ex- 

 tremity, where the black burnt rock, called kammeni-petra, quite similar to the 

 kammeni at Santorin, betrays a later origin. Pausanias gives the tradition 

 among the inhabitants of Methana, that, on the north coast, before the still 



