194 



CALCAREOUS BRECCIA CONTAINING BONES. 



The stratum 

 described. 



Similar ap- 

 pearance in 

 Other strata. 



me, that in 1774 a great quantity of stone bad been taken 

 from this place, to build several houses, and walls of enclo- 

 sures among the surrounding vineyards. In fact this calca- 

 reous mass had been wrought so much in one parts that it 

 wag not more than two or three feet thick ; while the other 

 part, which was yet Untouched, was twenty-five or thirty : 

 which led me to judge, that the general height of the whole 

 mass might have been about five and twenty feet. 



This ledge, about seventy or eighty yards loog, was inter- 

 sected in some parts from top to bottom by a reddish 

 brown earth ; very hard, and as it were enchased in the 

 rock, as I have said, in the shape of irregular columns. Be- 

 fore the opening of the quarry, this earth exhibited four co- 

 lumns, one of which alone remained entire, and sloped 

 from its middle to the top. The other three exhibited only 

 about two feet of the shaft, reckoning from the base, the 

 rest having been cut away with the rock. Each of these 

 columns was from three to four feet broad, and from fifteen 

 to eighteen thick. They, as well as the rock which appeared 

 to enclose them, were imbedded in the mass of earth at 

 their back, throughout the whole of the extent of the ledge, 

 both in length and height; which must formerly have exhi- 

 bited the appearance of a very extraordinary intercolumnia- 

 tion, both on account of the colour of the earth, which was 

 very different from that of the stone, and from the irregula- 

 rity of these columns, which had altogether the appearance 

 of so many distorted walls, constructed in the interior of the 

 stony mass. 



I had before had an opportunity of observing a similar 

 natural architecture in other calcareous ledges still more ex- 

 tensive than this, as those situate to the south near the 

 city of Bastia, on the estate of Messrs. Pallavicini of that 

 city, in which appears, independent of a resemblance of 

 pi'lars of a blackish gray, an earth not so hard as that men- 

 tioned above, of a different colour too, and not so thick, 

 which is arranged horizontally in strata between the beds of 

 stone, but containing only small nodules of the same earth 

 harder than the body of the earthy mass. 



•From the mines sprung in the quarry, this brownish red 

 earth, being blown up with the rock to which it appeared 



to 



