

(302 



LAKE AVERNUS.— VESUVIUS. 



[Ch. XXIV. 



valve to the whole Terra di Lavoro, while the fires of Vesu- 

 vius were dormant. 



Lake Avemus. 



seems 



diameter 



me 



vapours, such as are often emitted by craters after eruptions. 

 There is no reason for discrediting the account of Lucretius, 

 that birds could not fly over it without being stifled, although 

 they may now frequent it uninjured .* There 



must 



a time when this crater was m action ; and lor many cen- 

 turies afterwards it may have deserved the appellation of 

 ' atri jauna Ditis,' emitting, perhaps, gases as destructive of 

 animal life as those suffocating vapours given out by Lake 

 Quilotoa, in Quito, in 1797, by which whole herds of cattle 

 on its shores were killed, f or as those deleterious emanations 

 which annihilated all the cattle in the island of Lancerote, 

 one of the Canaries, in 17304 Bory St. Vincent mentions, 

 that in the same isle birds fell lifeless to the ground ; and Sir 

 William Hamilton informs us that he picked up dead birds 

 on Vesuvius during an eruption. 



Solfatara. — The Solfatara, near Puzzuoli, which may be 

 considered as a nearly extinguished crater, appears, by the 



» 



accounts of Strabo and others, to have been before the Chris- 

 tian era in very much the same state as at present, giving 

 vent continually to aqueous vapour, together with sulphu- 



muriatic 



>/ 



Such, then, were the points 



where the subterranean fires obtained vent, from the earliest 

 period to which tradition reaches back, down to the first cen- 

 tury of the Christian era ; but we then arrive at a crisis in the 

 volcanic action of this district — one of the most interesting 



man 



which he has observed the physical changes on the earth's 

 surface. From the first colonisation of Southern Italy by the 

 Greeks, Yesuvius afforded no other indications of its volcanic 



* De Eerum Nat vi. 740. — Forbes, 

 on Bay of Naples, Edin. Journ. of Sci., 

 No. iii. new series, p. 87. Jan. 1830. 



t Humboldt, Voy., p. 317. 



J Von Buch, Ueber einen vulcan 



ischen Ausbruch auf der Insel Lanze 

 rote. 













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