Geology. 



127 



movement. Since that period, no exact account of the level of the water 

 seems to have been taken, or at least none which has been published. 



Sir Charles Lyell then called attention to the head of a statue, lent to 

 him for exhibition by Mr. W. R. Hamilton, and which Mr. H. had pur- 

 chased from a peasant at Puzzuoli, in the neighborhood of the temple. 

 This head bears all the distinctive marks of the Jupiter Serapis of the 

 Vatican ; and, among others, a flat space is seen on the crown, doubtless 

 intended to receive the ornament, called the modius, or bushel, an emblem 

 of fertility, which adorns the ancient representations of this deity. One 

 side of the head is uninjured, as if it had lain in mud or sand, while the 

 other has "suffered a sea change," having been drilled by small annelids, 

 and covered with adhering serpulae, as if submerged for years in salt 

 water, like the three marble columns before mentioned. 



The speaker then alluded to an ancient mosaic pavement, found at the 

 time of his examination of the temple, 1828, five feet below the present 

 floor, implying the existence of an older building before the second tem- 

 ple was erected. The latter is ascertained by inscriptions, found in the 

 interior, to have been built at the close of the second and beginning of 

 the third centuries of the Christian era. 



A brief chronological sketch was then given of the series of natural 

 and historical events connected with the temple and the surrounding re- 

 gion ; comprising the volcanic eruptions of Ischia, Monte Nuovo, and 

 Vesuvius ; the date of the first and second temples, and their original 

 height above the sea ; the periods of the submergence and emergence of 

 the second temple ; the nature of the submarine and supramarine forma- 

 tions, in which it was found buried in 1750; and, lastly, allusion was 

 made to a bird's-eye view of this region, published at Rome in 1652, 

 and cited by Mr. Smith, in which the three columns are represented as 

 standing in a garden, at a considerable distance from the sea, and be- 

 tween them and the sea two churches, occupying ground which has since 

 disappeared. The history of the sinking and burying of the temple in 

 the dark ages, respecting which no human records are extant, has been 

 deduced from minute investigations made by Mr. Babbage and Sir Ed- 

 mund Head, in 1828, respecting the nature and contents of certain de- 

 posits formed round the columns, below the zone of lithodomous perfo- 

 rations. 



The unequal amount of movement in the land and bed of the sea, and 

 its different directions in adjoining areas in and around the bay of Baiae, 

 were then pointed out ; and the fact that the Temples of Neptune and 

 the Nymphs are now under water, as well as some Roman roads, while 

 no evidence of any corresponding subsidence or oscillations of level are 

 discoverable on the site of the city of Naples, which is only four miles 

 distant in a straight line. Analogous examples of upward and downward 

 movements in other parts of the Mediterranean were cited, such as the 

 sarcophagus of the Telmessus in Lycia, described by Sir Charles Fellows ; 

 and the changes in Candia, recently established by Captain Spratt, R.N., 

 who has ascertained that the western end of that island has been uplifted 

 17 feet above its ancient level, while another part of the southern coast 

 has risen more than 27 feet, so that the docks of ancient Grecian ports 

 are upraised, as well as limestone rocks drilled by lithodomi. At the 



