228 REPOET— 1886. 



The new Cumana Railway, which is to connect Naples with Baia and 

 Fusaro, in the first part of its course traverses a tunnel of about a mile 

 and a half long, which is cut in the body of the escarpment which consti- 

 tutes the rocky amphitheatre backing the west end of Naples. Until the 

 present, this was supposed to be composed of a moderately uniform mass 

 of pelagonatised basic marine tuff. Under the middle of the Corse- 

 Vitt. Emanuele and the Via Tasso the edge of a trachyte flow was 

 encountered and traversed for a distance of over 70 metres. The rock 

 the reporter has not yet examined microscopically, but it very much 

 resembles a simple non-quartziferous, and more probably a sodalite 

 trachyte. This line of railway will traverse a number of tunnels and 

 cuttings in the Campi Phlegrei, and will have to traverse the hot hill 

 which backs Baia, and will no doubt present various uncommon engi- 

 neering diflBculties, besides giving some useful information bearing on 

 terrestrial physics. 



Lastly, a deep well at present being bored at Ponticelli, on the out- 

 skirts of Naples towards Vesuvius, has already been carried to a depth 

 of over a hundred inetres, and during the latter half of this a series of 

 leucitic lava streams were traversed, showing the great distance to which 

 the old flows from Monte Somma reached, and also, that either great 

 depression of land has taken place, or that Monte Somma once formed a 

 volcanic island. As these different works progress they are and will be 

 kept under watch, and all that is interesting will be recorded. 



The reporter has partly prepared the first instalment of a study of 

 the ejected blocks of Monte Somma. He has left this subject dormant 

 for two reasons : first, the want of further chemical apparatus for the 

 execution of many analyses required ; and, secondly, it was considered 

 necessary to visit the ancient volcanic region of the Fassathal, in the 

 Tyrol, to study some points that could not be worked at in an area 

 covered by thick deposits from recent volcanoes. The striking analogy 

 between the products of volcanic action and the contact metamorphism 

 in the Southern Tyrol and at Vesuvius is so remarkable that many 

 interesting facts will come out of the study of these two regions in 

 relation to each other. The reporter, having had the opportunity this 

 summer of visiting the Tyrol, hopes this winter to be able to study the 

 ejected blocks of Monte Somma, which, from the absence of serpentini- 

 sation and other secondary changes, will throw much light on the origin 

 and mutual relations of many varieties of igneous and metamorphic rocks 

 and the genesis of numerous minerals. 



The reporter has treated during the past year various questions 

 bearing on Vesuvius and its neighbourhood in papers before the Royal 

 Societies of London and Dublin, the Royal Microscopical Society, the 

 Geologists' Association, and the Accademia Oronzio Costa, besides various 

 articles in ' Nature ' and other periodicals. The reporter's ' Monograph 

 of the Earthquakes of Ischia,' after many vicissitudes, was published at 

 the end of 1885. 



