264 Notice of Active and Extinct Volcano*. 



rection in which they are found to lie, rising on all sides towards 

 the crater, is a necessary result of this mode of formation." 



In the notice of Mr. Scrope's work on volcanos, in our last 

 number, allusion was made to the cultivated state of Vesuvius, 

 immediately before the catastrophe of Herculaneum and 

 Pompeii. ^Etna was active and familiarly known by its 

 eruptions, but Vesuvius was as truly, to appearance, an ex- 

 tinct volcano, as the cones of Auvergne are now. Its crater 

 was covered by vegetation, and its slopes by vineyards, fields, 

 and villas. History gave no distinct account of its eruptions, 

 and even tradition had transmitted only an indistinct suspi- 

 cion of its real character. Diodorus Siculus, Vitruvius, and 

 Strabo, were impressed with the appearances of igneous ac- 

 tion around Vesuvius, and the philosophers of those days, al- 

 though unaided by accurate science, reasoned as to Vesuvius 

 as we reason now, with regard to the extinct volcanos of 

 France and Germany. 



" This period of apparent security was however at length to 

 cease ; in the year 63 after Christ, the volcano gave the first 

 sympton of internal agitation in an earthquake, which occasion- 

 ed considerable damage to many of the cities in its vicinity. A 

 curious proof of this is exhibited by the excavations made at 

 Pompeii, which shew that the inhabitants were in the very act 

 of rebuilding the houses overturned by the preceding catastro- 

 phe, when their city was finally overwhelmed in the manner I 

 am about to describe. 



" On the 24th of August of the year 79, the tremendous erup- 

 tion took place, which has been so well described in the letters 

 of the younger Pliny. It was preceded by an earthquake which 

 had continued for several daj^s, but being slight was disregarded 

 by the inhabitants, who were not unaccustomed to such phenom- 

 ena. However on the night preceding the eruption the agitation 

 of the earth was so tremendous, as to threaten every thing with 

 destruction. 



" At length about one in the afternoon, a dense cloud was seen 

 -in the direction of Vesuvius, which after rising from the moun- 

 tain to a certain distance in one narrow vertical trunk, spread it- 

 self out laterally in a conical form, in such a manner, that its up- 

 per part might be compared to the branches, and the lower to 

 the trunk of a pine. It w r as descried from Misenum, where the 

 elder Pliny, as commander of the Roman fleet, was stationed, 

 with his family, among whom was his nephew the younger Pliny. 

 The latter, who seems already to have imbibed somewhat of the 

 spirit of the Stoical philosophy, which inculcated rather an in- 



