164) Tlie Volcanic Rocks of Rome and Victoria. 



bottom of these fresh-waters. The Sabine hills now bui'st 

 forth with tremendous energy — earthquakes raised the Seven 

 Hills of Kome, with their masses of volcanic rock, travertin, 

 and elephantine beds — and then the vast accumulations of 

 descending ashes, the present tufa granolare, were washed 

 by heavy rains in all the vales around, and walled in the 

 very Mediterranean. Again came repose. The Tiber, rolling 

 from the Appenines to this sterile land of desolation, pierced 

 its tufa beds, and carried the debris to the sea. The ash 

 itself yielded to the softening influences of nature, and pre- 

 pared for the granaries of Imperial Rome. 



In discussing the age of our Victorian volcanic deposits, 

 especially those tufaceous ones which are so similar to the 

 Roman beds, I fear I can say but little, and that without the 

 poetiy and romance so associated with Italian geology. We 

 live in a prosaic part of the world, unvisited yet by gentle 

 fairies, or by rambling ghosts. But if no Horace has farmed 

 our tufa, no Nero has tortured in our tufaceous caverns. 

 Though our ancient songs have been but the chants of lubras 

 at corrobories, our lava plains have not been bathed with 

 tears and blood as the fair Campagna. 



The fossil marsupial lion, found in connection with our 

 ash-beds to the westward, most certainly takes us far back 

 into the past. It is a long day since the kangaroo and 

 wombat, whose gigantic size and curious formation so asto- 

 nished the EngKsh geologists, were laid by Lake Colangulac, 

 or washed into the Wellington caves of New South Wales, 

 where Major Mitchell found them thirty years ago beneath 

 the red earth. We have no Carnivora now of any species, 

 allied with a monster that played such havoc in the old 

 Victorian forests among the gentle kangaroos, four yards in 

 height. Yet these were the creatures inconvenienced by 

 our descending ash showers. I found the tooth of a primi- 

 tive shark in a deposit at the edge of the superimposed 

 tufa. 



Our oldest inhabitant has lived here but thirty years. In 

 Italy there are records of nearly as many centuries. We 

 may, therefore, with gi^ace yieJd the palm of superior anti- 

 quity of volcanic action to our mistress on the Tiber, though 

 our tufa is as thick as the ash of the Catacombs, and our 

 bluestone as hard as the blocks of the Appian Way. 



As to our basalt — that successive streams flowed over the 

 same spot is a fact well known to our enterprising diggers, 

 who pierce four such strata at Ballarat. Such are found. 



