266 Dr Daubeny on the Geology of Sicily. 
quotes an observation made him by the Abbe Recupero, which 
seems to him to impugn the faith of our received chronologies, 
are, in reality, of a date antecedent to the last general eruption 
of the waters, for I have perceived nothing analogous to these 
beds among the lavas which the mountain sends forth at pre- 
sent. 
At all events Brydone has been grossly deceived in imagining 
that the seven beds of lava seen lying, one above the other, near 
this spot, have been successively decomposed into vegetable 
mould ; the substance which really intervenes between the beds 
being nothing more than a sort of ferruginous tuff, just similar 
to what would be produced by a shower of volcanic ashes, such 
as usually precedes or follows an eruption of lava, mixed up 
with mud, or consolidated by rain. 
Of course, his inference with respect to the antiquity of the 
globe falls to the ground, as being founded on the fact of the 
decomposition of so many beds of lava, which turns out to be 
altogether a mistake. 
With regard to the mere modern lavas of Mount Etna, those, 
I mean, of manifestly postdiluvian origin, I have only to re- 
mark, that they exhibit much less variety, both in the nature 
of their component parts, and in that of their accidental ingre- 
dients, than do those of Vesuvius. The older lavas belonging 
to this class sometimes possess the characters of porphyry slate, 
and even of trachyte, from which there would seem to be a 
made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of the eruptions of 
this mountain. For if it requires two thousand years, or upwards, to form but a 
scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have been more than that space of 
time betwixt each of the eruptions which have formed these strata. But what 
shall w r e say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci, of a great depth. They pierced 
through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the surfaces of which "were pa- 
rallel, and most of them covered w r ith a thick bed of rich earth. Now, says he, 
the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to rea- 
son from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least 14,000 years ago. 
Recupero tells me he is exceedingly embarrassed, by these discoveries, in writing 
the history of the mountain ; that Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him, 
and blunts all his zeal for inquiry, for he really has not the conscience to make his 
mountain so young as that Prophet makes the world. The Bishop, w r ho is stre- 
nuously orthodox, — for it is an excellent See, — has already warned him to be upon 
his guard, and not pretend to be a better historian than Moses ; nor to presume to 
urge any thing that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory to his sa- 
cred authority.” — Brydone' s Tour through Sicily , vol i. p. 140. . 
