PT. in. OR POISONEn BY VEGETABLE GROWTH? 1G7 



the town of Beliat, and seventeen feet below the present 

 surface of the country. More than 170 coins of silver 

 and copper have already been found, and many articles 

 in metal and earthenware. . The overlying deposit con- 

 sisted of about five feet of river sand, with a substratum 

 about twelve feet thick of red alluvial clay. In the 

 neighbourhood are several rivers and torrents which 

 descend from the mountains charged with vast quanti- 

 ties of mud, sand, and shingle, and witliin the memory 

 of persons now living the modern Behat has been 

 threatened by an inundation which, after retreating, 

 left the neiglibouring country strewed over with a 

 superficial covering of sand several feet thick. In 

 sinking wells in the environs, masses of shingle and 

 boulders have been reached resembling those now in 

 the river channels of the same district, under a deposit 

 of thirty feet of reddish loam. Captain Cautley, there- 

 fore, who directed the excavations, supposes that the 

 matter discharged by torrents has gradually raised the 

 whole country skirting the base of the lower hills; and 

 that the ancient tov/n, having been originally built in a 

 hollow, was submerged by floods, and covered over 

 with sediment, seventeen feet in thickness.' 



Denudation by rain extends over the whole dpace 

 of the earth. Its pace will be modified, hastened, 

 retarded, or partially stopped, by a thousand such cir- 

 cumstances as comparative hardness of surface, porous- 

 ness, levelness, vegetation, heaviness of rain, &c., &c. 

 Over vast tracts denudation by rain is so slow as to be 



