SKETCH OF ^EGINA AND METHANA. 795 



The limestone is continued to the southeast, as far as Mt. Paliango, 

 forming horizontal beds, in places one or two metres thick, over- 

 lying clays. The small hill on which stands the chapel of St. 

 Dimitrios is formed of beds of this same clay, capped by a thick 

 bed of limestone, and not, as Fiedler says, 1 of reddish trachyte. 

 The lower slopes of the Temple Ridge are covered with an ande- 

 sitic breccia, similar to that described below, the andesite prob- 

 ably being derived from hills to the northeast, east, and south, 

 which lack of time forbade my visiting, but which had the 

 appearance of being andesite and not limestone. A ready means 

 of discrimination is furnished by the small pine trees, which seem 

 to grow best on a limestone soil. Both in Mgina and Methana 

 the limestone mountains are either covered or plentifully over- 

 grown with the common small Aleppo pine {Pinus Hcdepensis), 

 while the mountains of eruptive material are almost, if not quite, 

 devoid of them. The soft late Tertiary limestone is met with 

 below the temple on the road to the Bay of St. Marina. To the 

 southwest rises the long ridge of Mt. Paliango (or Paraliago), 

 292 m. above the sea, built up of gray limestone beds, dipping 

 1 5 ° to the southwest. The top is covered with pines, but the sides 

 are steep and rugged, and the lower slopes covered with talus. 



With the exception of some small alluvial and beach deposits, 

 the rest of the island is of eruptive origin. These Cretaceous 

 limestone masses must have formed, prior to the eruptions, a small 

 island group, the presence of the breccia of water-worn andesite 

 blocks, and late Tertiary beds of marl, etc., showing that eleva- 

 tion has since taken place. The surrounding smaller islands, 

 Augistri, Moni, Metofi, Lagosa, etc., are to all appearances, made 

 of the same hard Cretaceous limestone. 



As we approach, coming from /Egina, the mountains south 

 of the northern limestone ridge we find the Neogene limestone 

 and marls gradually giving place to a coarse breccia of rounded 

 blocks of andesite cemented by a soft white limestone of Tertiary 

 age. These blocks, which vary in dimensions from the size of one's 

 fist to larger than one's head, are of the same rock as that which 



'Op. cit. L, 274. 



