FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
151 
much smaller than tliose 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, i.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 bourgeois 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 Rouville justly remarks, it appears now an established fact that 
native mercury does not belong exclusively to the pala30Koic 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. J unghuhn, 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 bow 
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. 
