Dr. Daubeny on the Geology of Sicily. 243 
quotes an observation made him by the Abbé Recupero, 
which seems to him to impugn the faith of our received chro- 
nologies, are, in reality, of a date antecedent to the last gene- 
ral eruption of the waters, for I have perceived nothing 
analogous to these beds among the lavas which the mountain 
sends forth at present. 
At all events Brydone has been grossly deceived, in im- 
agining that the seven beds of lava seen lying, one above 
the other, near this spot, have been successively decomposed 
into vegetable mould; the substance which really intervenes 
between the beds being nothing more than a sort of ferrugi- 
nous tuff, just similar to what would be produced by a show- 
er of volcanic ashes, such as usually precedes or follows an 
eruption of lava, mixed up with mud, or consolidated by 
Fain. 
Of course, his inference with respect to the antiquity of 
the glohe falls to the ground, as being founded on the fact of 
the decomposition of so many beds of lava, which turns out 
to be altogether a mistake. 
With regard to the mere modern lavas of Mount Etna, 
those, I mean, of manifestly postdiluvian origin, I have only 
to remark, that they exhibit much less variety, both in the 
nature of their component parts, and in that of their accident- 
al ingredients, than do those of Vesuvius. The older lavas 
belonging to this class sometimes possess the characters of 
porphyry slate, and even of trachyte, from which there would 
seem to be a gradation, dependent on the relative antiquity 
of the beds, down to the lavas of the present period, which 
have the usual cellular and vitreous aspect of such products. 
Having made this observation, whilst in Sicily, I was 
pleased on my return, to find, on perusing some papers of the 
celebrated*Prussian geologist Von Buch, (in the Transactions 
of the Berlin Academy,) that a similar observation is there 
recorded, on lavas in general, which are conceived by him to 
the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes 
the world. The Bishop, who is strenuously orthodox,—for it is an ex- 
€ellent See,—has already warned him to be upon his guard, and not 
pretend to be a better historian than Moses; nor to presume to urge 
any thing that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory te 
%is sacred authority.” —Brydone’s Tour through Sicily, Vol. 1. p, 149. 
