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Near this church is a grotto of no great exfenf, 

 in the midst of which stands a very good statue of 

 St. Paul. This apostle, every one knows, is held in 

 high veneration among the Maltese, because, they 

 pretend, he landed on iheir island and delivered if 

 forever from he serpents, with which it was before 

 infested. The grotto has been scooped out of a 

 species of white earth, soft and calcareous, com- 

 monly enominated bole of Malta {bolus Meh terms) ; 

 but the name is improper, for the bole is a clayey 

 earth, more or less pure, consequently capable of 

 being vitrified, and nor subject to the attack of 

 acids; whereas the Maltese earth, on the contrary, 

 is of a calcareous nature, and produces efferves- 

 cence with these same acids. Burton has followed, 

 on this article, the opinion of most of the minera- 

 logists who preceded him, and who, copying from 

 each other, had considered the Maltese earth as a 

 bole, or argillous earth, and, in his History of Mi- 

 nerals, he has made a bole of it; but, what is not 

 easily to be conceived, is his mistaking the Mal- 

 tese earth for a red bole, though it be white as 

 chalk, with which it has, moreover, many other 

 points of affinity*. It is known at Malta by no 



* " The red bole derives its colour from iron in rust It is 



" with this bole that they prepare the terra sigJlata They 



" likewise give it the names of Lertinos earth, holy earth* St. Paul's 

 " earth, earth of Malta, earth of Constantinople." BufFon Hist. 

 Nat. desJMineraux, art. des Bols. 



other 



