the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. 109 
that during the force of the late eruption the fish had totally 
abandoned the coast from Portici to the Torre delf Annun- 
ziata, and that they could not take one in their nets nearer the 
shore than two miles. The divers there, who fish for the an- 
cini (which we call sea eggs) and other shell fish, likewise told 
me, that for the space of a mile from that shore, since the erup- 
tion, they have found all the fish dead in their shells, as they 
suppose either from the heat of the sand at the bottom of the 
sea, or from poisonous vapours. The divers at Naples com- 
plain of their finding also many of these shell fish, or as they are 
called here in general terms ,frutti di mare, dead in their shells. 
I thought that these little well attested facts might contri- 
bute to show the great force of the wonderful chemical opera- 
tion of nature that has lately been exhibited here. The mofete, 
or fixed air vapours, must certainly have been generated by the 
action of the vitriolic acid upon the calcareous earth, as both 
abound in Vesuvius. The sublimations, which are visibly ope- 
rating by the chemistry of nature all along the course of the 
last lava that ran from Vesuvius, and particularly in and about 
the new mouths that have been formed by the late eruption 
on the flanks of the volcano, having been analyzed by Signor 
Domenico Tomaso, an ingenious chemist of Naples, and 
whose experiments, and the result of them, are now published, 
have been found to be chiefly sal ammoniac, mixed with a 
small quantity of the calx of iron : but not to betray my ig- 
norance on this subject, and pretending to nothing more than 
the being an exact ocular observer, I refer you to the work 
itself, which accompanies this letter. Many hundred weight 
of the Vesuvian sal ammoniac have been collected on the 
mountain since the late eruption by the peasants, and sold at 
