an Eruption 0/ Mount Vefuvius. 
Somma and Ottaiano ; and was likewife fenfibly felt at 
Palma and Lauro, which are much farther from Vefu- 
vius than the former. Minute afhes, of a reddifli hue, 
fell fo thick at Somma and Ottaiano, that they darkened 
the air in fuch a manner as that objects could not be dif* 
tinguifhed at the diftance of ten feet. Long filaments 
of a vitrified matter like fpun-glafs were mixed and fell 
with thefe a£hes (s> ; and the fulphureous fmoke was fo 
violent, that feveral birds in cages were fuffocated, the 
leaves of the trees in the neighbourhood of Somma and 
Ottaiano were covered with white falts very corrofive. 
About two o’clock in the afternoon, an extraordinary 
globe of fmoke, of a very great diameter, was diftindtly 
perceived, by many of the inhabitants of Portici, to iflue 
from the crater of Vefuvius, and proceed haftily towards 
the mountain of Somma, againft which it ftruck and dif- 
perfed itfelf, having left a train of white fmoke, mark- 
(g) During an eruption of the volcano in the ifle of Bourbon in 1766, fome 
miles of country, at the diftance of fix leagues from that volcano, were covered 
with a flexible, capillary, yellow glafs, fome of which were two or three feet 
long, with fmall vitrous globules at a little diftance one from the other. Count 
buffon fhewed me fome of this capillary and flexible glafs, which is preferved 
in the Royal Mufeum at Paris, and which perfe&ly refembles the filaments of 
vitrified matter which fell at Ottaiano and in other parts on the borders of 
Vefuvius during this eruption, sorrentino, in his Iftoria del Vefuvio, pub- 
lifhed at Naples in 1734, likewife mentions vitrified matter, like herbs and 
ftraw, being found on the ground in the neighbourhood of Vefuvius during an 
eruption of that mountain in the year 1724. 
H 2 
mg 
