LYRLL — ON CllATEHS OP KI^EVATION. 
was covered witli snow. The Canon Recupero, a good observer and 
man of great sagacity, was commissioned by Charles of Boui-bon, 
King of Naples, to report on the nature and cause of the catastrophe. 
He accordingly visited the Val del Bove in the month of June, three 
months after the event, and found that the channel of the recent 
flood, now less than two Sicilian miles broad, was still strewed over 
with sand and fragments of rock to the depth of forty palms*. The 
volume of water in a length of one mile he estimated at sixteen 
millions of cubic feet, and he says that it ran at the rate of a mile in 
a minute and a half for the first twelve miles. At the upper end of 
Val del Bove, all the pre-existing inequalities of the gi-ound for a 
space of two miles in length and one in breadth were perfectly 
levelled up and made quite even, and the marks of the passage of the 
flood were traceable from thence up the great precipice, or Balzo di 
Trifoglietto, to the Piano del Lago, or highest platform. 
Recupero, in his report, maintains that if all the snow on Etna, 
which he affirms is never more than four feet deep (some chasms we 
presume excepted), were melted in one instant, which no current of 
lava could accomplish, it "would not have supplied such a volume of 
water. He came therefore to the startling conclusion that the water 
was vomited forth by the crater itself, and was driven out from some 
reservoir in the interior of Etna. 
As it seems unlikely the Canon could have been mistaken as to 
the region of the mountain whence the waters came. Sir Charles sub- 
mits as an explanation, that there might have been at the time of 
that eruption not only the winter's snow of that year, but many older 
layers of ice, alternating with volcanic sand and lava, at the foot or 
on the flanks of the cone which were suddenly melted by the per- 
meation through them of hot vapours, and the injection into them of 
melted matter. 
In the first edition of the " Principles of Geology" the existence of 
a glacier under the volcanic sand and lava near the Casa Inglese is 
noticed ; and if glaciers may thus endure for long series of years, the 
store of water which Recupero speculated upon as contained in the 
interior of the mountain seems sufficiently accounted for. 
The gradual rise of the sea-coast, and of the inland cliffs at the 
eastern base of Etna is attested by the existence of alluvial deposits 
in some places some hundred feet above the sea ; while the fossils 
contained m them, and those contained in the fossiliferous strata cut 
into teiTaces at various heights, afford intelligible data for working 
out the general history of such upheaval. The proximity of land, for 
instance, is shown by the tusks and teeth of elephants at Palerno and 
Terra Forte ; while the existence at other places, as near the church 
St. Andi'ea, below Taormina, of raised beaches containing shells of 
recent species shows a former coastal line. It seems probable also, 
from the leaf-bearing tuffs of Fasano, near Catania, that a portion of 
Etna is of sub-aerial origin, coeval with the upraised alluvial and 
A palm is a fraction more than 10 inches Englisli. 
