VOL. XLIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SQ? 



for the most part parallel and correspondent to those of the rocks, islands, and 

 neighbouring continents. They contain stones of different sorts, minerals, 

 metals, various petrified bodies, pumice-stone, lavas formed by volcanos. Istria, 

 Morlachia, Dalmatia, Albania, and some other adjacent countries, as well as 

 the rocks, the islands, and the correspondent bottom of the Adriatic sea, consist 

 of a mass of a whitish marble, of a uniform grain, and of almost an equal hard- 

 ness. It is that kind of marble called by the Italians marmo di Rovigno, and 

 known to the ancients by the name of marmor Traguriense. This vast bed of 

 marble, in many places under both the earth and the sea, is interrupted by se- ' 

 veral other kinds of marble, and covered by a great variety of bodies. There 

 are discovered there, for instance, gravel, sand, and earth, more or less fat. 



The variety of these soils under the sea is remarkable. It is to this that Dr. 

 Donati ascribes the varieties observed with respect to the nature and quantity of 

 plants and animals found at the bottom of the sea. Some places are inhabited 

 by a great number of different species of plants and animals ; in others, only some 

 and let out precipitately, to cleanse the iron ore lying near the surface on the 

 sides of these mountains, which greatly discolours the water, which at those 

 times, and after heaN-y rains, is so rapid and violent, as to carry down prodigious 

 quantities of large stones into another river called Avon Looyd. Mr. M. walked 

 up the Frooyd on the bottom of the river, it being quite dry, up to the chasm, 

 that now receives the water; it is about 20 feet wide; and when its banks are 

 full, about 8 or 10 feet deep; but now filled up to 15 feet with stones carried in 

 by the water. There is a lime-stone rock near the surface, about 2 feet thick, 

 lying in large beds 2 or 3 feet square, more or less in some places, joined close 

 in others. On one side of the river near this hole, are 3 pits sunk at the same 

 time, the one within 10 yards, of which there was no appearance before; the 

 other two at about 30 yards up the side of the hill, which have been observed, 

 for many years, though nobody knew the cause of them, are now sunk some 

 yards deeper, and some trees and shrubs, that were round the edge of the pits, 

 with the ground on which they grew, are sunk down near the bottom. These 

 pits at top are about 1 2 yards diameter, gradually narrowing to a centre, in shape 

 of a funnel or tun-dish. Under, it is supposed, is this cavity, through which 

 the river now runs, extending itself in one place under the river Avon Looyd, at 

 about a mile distance, where it broke out a few days after, in several places, on 

 the opposite side of it, where were 3 small springs. The reason for this conjec- 

 ture is, these springs were observed to be always clear till a few days after the 

 sinking of this rock, but now continue to send forth large quantities of this 

 water, which varies in colour like the water received in at the hole. 



VOL. X. 4 U 



