40 ^ 
Proceedings of the Wernerian Society. 
A series of observations made at Guayaquil, by Mr Williant 
Jameson, surgeon, contained in a letter to Professor Jameson ; 
also, observations made during a voyage to the East Indies and 
China, in 1817 and 1818, by Captain Charles Stewart of the 
Honourable East India Company’s ship General Harris ; were 
laid on the table. 
Dr R. E. Grant then read the first part of a memoir, contain- 
ing a Series of observations and experiments on the natural his- 
tory of Sponges^ which he illustrated by means both of living 
and of dried specimens. 
Art. XXVIII.— SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 
GEOGRAPHY. 
1. Scylla. — As the breadth across tills celebrated strait has 
been so often disputed, I particularly state, that the Faro Tower 
is exactly 6047 English yards from that classical bug-bear the 
Hock of Scylla, which, by poetical fiction, has been depicted in^ 
such terrific colours ; and to describe the horrors of which, Pha- 
lerion, a painter, celebrated for his nervous representation of the 
awful and the tremendous, exerted his whole talent. But the 
flights of poetry can seldom bear to be shackled by homely truth ; 
and if we are to receive the fine imagery, that places the summit 
of this rock in clouds, brooding eternal mists and tempests; that 
represents it as inaccessible, even to a man provided with twenty 
hands and twenty feet, and immerses its base among' ravenous 
sea-dogs ; v/hy not also receive the whole circle of mythological 
dogmas of Homer, who, though so frequently dragged forth as 
an authority in history, theology, surgery, and geography, ought, 
injustice, to be read only as a poet. In the writings of so ex- 
quisite a bard, we must not expect to find all his representations 
strictly confined to a mere accurate narration of facts. Moderns 
of intelligence, in visiting this spot, have gratified their imagina- 
tions, already heated by such descriptions as the escape of the 
Argonauts, and the disasters of Ulysses, with fancying it the 
scourge of seamen, and that, in a gale, its caverns roar like 
