Ch. III.] 



LAZZAKO MORO. 



51 





B 



r.U 



1 

















d« 





** , 



it 





accumulated in liis travels, Vallisneri had been so much struck 

 with the remarkable continuity of the more recent marine 

 strata, from one end of Italy to the other, that he came to 

 the conclusion that the ocean formerly extended over the 

 whole earth, and after abiding there for a long time, had gra- 



dually subsided. 



however untenable, was a 



hypothesis, against 



which Yallisneri, and after him all the Tuscan geologists, 



d. while it was warm 



-k 



members of the Institute of Bologna. 



Among others of that day, Spada, a priest of Grezzana, in 

 1737, wrote to prove that the petrified marine bodies near 

 Verona were not diluvian.f Mattani drew a similar inference 

 from the shells of Volterra and other places : while Costantini, 

 on the other hand, whose observations on the valley of the 

 Brenta and other districts were not without value, undertook 

 to vindicate the truth, of the deluge, as also to prove that 

 Italy had been peopled by the descendants of Japhet. % 



), 1740. — Lazzaro Ivloro, in his work (published in 



Mot 



1640) ' On the Marine Bodies which are found in the Moun- 

 tains,' S attempted to apply the theory of earthquakes, and 

 changes of level in the earth's crust, as expounded by Strabo, 



horn 



His 



to the geological phenomena described by Yallisneri. 

 attention was awakened to the elevating power of subterra- 

 nean forces by a remarkable phenomenon which happened in 

 his own time, and which had also been noticed by Yallisneri 

 in his letters. A new island rose in 1707 from deep water in 

 the Gulf of Santorin in the Mediterranean, during continued 

 shocks of an earthquake, and, increasing rapidly in size, 

 grew in less than a month to be half a mile in circumference, 



r. It was 



mar 



and about twenty-five feet above high-water 



soon afterwards covered by volcanic ejections, but, when first 





















* Brocchi, p. 28. 

 t Ibid. p. 33. 

 ± Ibid. 



Sui Crostaeei ed altri Corpi Marini 

 che si troYano sui Monti. 



of his views were in accordance with 

 theirs, he was probably ignorant of their 

 writings, for they had not been trans- 

 lated. As he always refers to the Latin 

 edition of Burnet, and a French trans- 



|| Moro does not cite the works of lation of Woodward, we may presume 

 llooke and Bay ; and although so many that he did not read English. 



E 2 



