FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 



151 



much smaller than those just mentioned. It is in the fissures of these 

 deposits that the globules of mercury show themselves." 



The presence of calomel (proto-chloride of mercury) was also 

 formerly noted by Poitevin, and afterwards by M. Marcel de Serres, in 

 the white marl of which we have just spoken. This substance was 

 seen in small cylindrical branches, but has not been again discovered 

 among the strata laid bare in building the new fish-market. 



Mercury generally accompanies cinnabar (red sulphuret of mercury) in 

 nature, but not a vestige of the latter substance has yet been discovered 

 at Montpellier, although a very slight quantity of black sulphuret has 

 been observed; but the presence of this appears to be accidental, z.e., it has 

 been formed since the mecurial deposit has been exposed to the air. As 

 to the pure quicksilver, it is a question whether large fortunes await 

 the good lourgeois of Montpellier by the re-discovery of this precious 

 metal in the soil of the town they inhabit. However, if speculation is 

 no better off than before, science has perhaps gained something; for, as 

 M. de Eouville justly remarks, it appears now an established fact that 

 native mercury does not belong exclusively to the palaeozoic and ancient 

 secondary strata, but that this metal is also to be met with in some of 

 the most recent deposits which geological science has brought to light.* 

 How it found its way there is a question that will doubtless puzzle 

 geologists for some time to come. 



M. Junghuhn, to whose researches we have already alluded in a former 

 paper, and whose name we shall always see with pleasure associated 

 with geological investigation, has passed twelve years of his life in 

 the Island of Java, for the express purpose of watching the volcanic 

 agencies manifested there to so great a degree. The forty-five vol- 

 canos of Java, he tells us, are constantly in activity, pouring forth hot 

 acidulated water, ashes, and mud, but no lava. In 1470, when the 

 Mahometans conquered the island, the dominant worship in the coun- 

 try was that of Siva, the divinity of destruction, which proves how 

 closely religious notions may be connected with the natural phe- 

 nomena or the local physical circumstances of a country. Driven 

 from the plains, the Sivaites retired to the vast craters of 

 their volcanos, and the remains of temples erected by these 



* The mercuriferous deposit at Cividale (Lombardy) and perhaps others, have 

 been referred to the Eocene age. See Jahrb. K.K., Geol. Reichs. Wien, 1855. 

 Galeotti has described tertiary mercuriferous rocks in Mexico.. — Ed. Geologist. 



