38 



ETNA. 



[Ch. XXVI. 



somewl 



vomited 



was 



mountain 



me 



months 



on 



troplie, conld have been 



mi 



came 



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itimately 



from the fact that the 



to have been le{ 

 wreck of the inundation was traceable continuously from the 

 sea-shore at Eiposto up to the highest cone or its immediate 

 neighbourhood. I am, therefore, inclined to suspect that at 

 the time of the eruption of 1755 there was upon the summit 

 of Etna, not only the winter's snow of that year, but many 

 older layers of ice alternating with volcanic sand and lava 

 at the foot or in the flanks of the cone, which were suddenly 

 melted by the permeation through them of hot vapours, and 

 the injection into them of melted matter. 



Glacier preserved by a covering of lava. — I stated in 1828 t 

 that I ascertained the fact of the existence of a glacier under 

 lava near the Casa Inglese, on the SE. side of the highest 

 cone, and that it had been quarried during the previous 

 summer, affording a supply of ice to the Catanians, at the 

 close of an unusually hot season. On returning thirty years 

 afterwards (September 1858), I found the same mass of ice, 

 of unknown extent and thickness, still unmelted. It had 

 been quarried only five years before, to the depth of four feet 

 on the very same spot. My guide told me that he had seen 

 this mass of solid ice, the bottom of which they did not 

 reach, and that it was overlaid by ten feet of sand, and the 

 sand again by lava. 



Signor Mario Gemmellaro had satisfied himself in 1828, that 

 nothing but the subsequent flowing of the lava over the snow 

 could account for the position of the glacier. We may 



commencement 



D 



mass of drift snow had been covered by volcanic sand 

 showered down upon it before the descent of the lava. A 

 dense stratum of this fine dust mixed with scoriae is well 



* Eecupcro, Storia dell' Etna, p. 85. 



t Principles of Geology, 1st edition, p. 369. 



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