EEVIEWS. 
79 
projectiles and close to the lava torrent. Some were buried beneath it 
and disappeared for ever; two dead bodies were picked up and eleven 
grievously injured, one of whom died close to the Observatory.” The 
Professor, after giving the names of those who thus perished, goes on with 
the most interesting and instructive discourse as to the fissures, the cones, 
the amount of lava and where it ran ; and he mentions what will possibly 
surprise many of those who appear to think that his observatory is com- 
pletely removed from any danger, that, ‘‘ on the might of the 26th of 
April, the Observatory lay between two torrents of fire, which emitted an 
insufferable heat. The glass in the window-frames, especially on the 
Vetrana side, was hot and cracking, and a smell of scorching was percep- 
tible in the rooms.” The several other points of the book to which we 
cannot refer through want of space are the following, and are of the deepest 
interest : The fall of projectiles and tempest ; diminution of height of the 
cone ; MM. Lamond and Gauss’ apparatus ; nature and chemical analysis of 
the lavas ; bombs, lapilli, and ashes ; the craters and their fumaroles ; electri- 
city of the smoke and ashes ; the Bifilar electrometer ; and, lastly, the con- 
clusions, eighteen in number, which the author arrives at from his investi- 
gations. As we have said already, the work is an admirable one, and is 
remarkably soon published after the eruption. We have omitted to say a 
word about the plates, which are both numerous and excellent, more espe^ 
daily those which represent the seismographic apparatus, which are ex- 
tremely delicate and somewhat complex. 
EECOKDS OF THE KOOKS.* 
S INCE the days when the late Hugh Miller gave us his Old Red Sand- 
stone,” and his various other works, popular in title and style, and 
eminently scientific in their treatment of the subject taken up, we have not 
had one book of a similar class. We are delighted to say, however, that in 
the volume which has now been sent us, we have a work at once popular, 
clear, and terse in style, and at the same time soundly accurate and novel 
in the matter which it conveys. In these Records of the Rocks ” which 
Mr. Symonds has placed before us, we have the work of one, who, though 
he be merely a country clergyman, is yet exquisitely learned in the subject 
of geology, and that, too, not as a mere bookworm, but as a calm and 
careful student of the rocks, who has spent nearly thirty years in exploring 
with his hammer almost the entire geology of England. And there is too 
a charm about his book which the mere study of geology would have failed 
to give, and which arises from the manner in which the author takes care 
not to weary his readers with mere geological details, but turns off at the 
proper moment to a sketch of the scenery of some of the villages of pic- 
turesque old Wales, or to a learned discussion anent the history of some 
* “ Records of the Rocks ; or. Notes on the Geology, Natural History, 
and Antiquities of North and South Wales, Devon, and Cornwall.” By 
the Rev. W. S. Symonds, F.G.S., Rector of Pendock. London: John 
Murray. 1872. 
