TO HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 



about volcanoes, earthquakes, and fossils, occurring here and 

 there in this work, are not always trustworthy. They seem, 

 in most cases, to have been based on indirect informa- 

 tion. By a tragic decree of fate, the untiring student and 

 naturalist met his death while engaged in observing the 

 grandest geological event of antiquity, the first outbreak of 

 Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D. Pliny the Younger describes the 

 death of his uncle in two letters to Tacitus, recounting how 

 at the beginning of the eruption the elder Pliny was stationed 

 at Misenum as Commander of the Fleet, but went at once to 

 Stabia to bring help to the sufferers and to witness the great 

 drama of nature. He died in the open field, probably suffo- 

 cated by the volcanic vapour and ash. His corpse was found 

 unharmed three days later, when the darkened sky gradually 

 became clear. The younger Pliny's vivid description of the 

 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and the accompanying earth- 

 quake, is one of the most remarkable literary productions in 

 the domain of geology. It is certainly curious that he should 

 have omitted to mention the earth-tremors at Herculaneum, 

 Pompeii, and Stabia, confirmation of which has however been 

 given by Dio Cassius. 



A poetic account of an eruption of Mount Etna is happily 

 amongst the fragments that have been preserved from the 

 works of Lucilius, the poet in the second century A.D. Alto- 

 gether this volcano played a very important role in the litera- 

 ture of the ancient writers. Nor were the Romans devoid 

 of interest in fossils : Suetonius relates that the Emperor 

 Augustus decorated his villa in Capri with huge fossil bones, 

 which at that time were held to be the remains of a giant 

 race. 



If we pass in review what antiquity has bequeathed to us of 

 actual geological knowledge, we find our heritage surprisingly 

 meagre. The tendency of eastern races towards the fanciful, 

 and of the Greeks to philosophical speculations, brought forth 

 an abundance of hypotheses about the origin of the universe 

 and the development of the earth; and even although some of 

 these may in part coincide with accepted scientific conceptions 

 of the present day, it has to be remembered that in these 

 cases the early hypotheses were rather happy "guesses at 

 truth," than general theories founded inductively upon a series 

 of accurately observed data. 



Far more valuable than the most ingenious speculations are 



