[ 9 ] 
tain mufl: have been open in more than one place. A 
paHage in Pliny’s letter to Tacitus feems to fay as 
much, “ Interim e P^cjuvio nwnte phirihiis locis latiJjimcB 
Jlamma, atqiie incotdia rehicebant^ quorum fulgor et 
“ claritas tenebras noBh peJlebat fo that very pro- 
bably the matter that covers Pompeii proceeded 
from a mouth, or crater, much nearer to it than is 
the great mouth of the volcano, from whence 
came the matter that covers Herculaneum. Tins 
matter might neverthelefs be faid to have proceeded 
from Vefuvlus, juft as the eruption in the year 1760, 
which was quite independent of the great crater (be- 
ing four miles from it), is properly called an eruption 
of Vefuvius. 
In the beginning of eruptions, volcanos frequently 
throw up water mixed with the afhes. Vefuvius did 
fo in the eruption of 1631, according to the tefti- 
mony of many contemporary writers. The fame 
circumftance happened in 1669 according to the 
account of Ignazzio Sorrentino, who, by his Hiftory 
of Mount Vefuvius printed at Naples in 1734, has 
fliewn himfelf to have been a very accurate obferver 
of the phaenomena of the volcano, for many years 
that he lived at Torre del Greco, fituated at the foot 
of it. At the beginning of the formation of the new 
mountain, near Puzzole, water was mixed with the 
aftaes thrown up, as will be feen in two very curious 
and particular accounts of the formation of that 
mountain,- which I fhall have the pleafure of com- 
municating to you prefently; and in 1755 Etna threw 
up a quantity of water in the beginning of an 
eruption, as is mentioned in the letter I fent you laft 
VoL. LXI. C year 
