124 ANIMALS SPEEDILY BURIED. 
The fishes of Torre d'Orlaiido, in the Bay of 
Naples, near Castelamare, seem also to have 
perished suddenly. M. Agassiz finds that the 
countless individuals which occur there in Ju- 
rassic limestone, all belong to a single species 
of the genus Tetragonolepis. An entire shoal 
seems to have been destroyed at once, at a place 
where the waters were either contaminated with 
some noxious impregnation, or overcharged with 
heat.^ 
In the same manner also, we may imagine 
deposits from muddy water, mixed perhaps with 
noxious gases, to have formed by their sediments 
a succession of thick beds of marl and clay, 
such as those of the Lias formation ; and at the 
same time to have destroyed, not only the Tes- 
tacea and lower orders of animals inhabiting the 
bottom, but also the higher orders of marine 
creatures within the regions thus invaded. Evi- 
dence of the fact of vast numbers of fishes and 
saurians having met with sudden death and 
immediate burial, is also afforded by the state 
of entire preservation in which the bodies of 
hundreds of them are often found in the Lias. 
* The proximity of this rock to the Vesuvian chain of volcanic 
eruptions, offers a cause sufficient to have imparted either of these 
destructive powers to the waters of a limited space in the bay of 
Naples, at a period preceding those intense volcanic actions which 
prevailed in this district during the deposition of the Tertiary 
strata, and which are still going on there. 
