124 ANIMALS SPEEDILY BURIED. 
The fishes of Torre d’Orlando, in the Bay of 
Naples, near Castelamare, seem also to have 
perished suddenly. M. Agassiz finds that the 
countless individuals which occur there in Ju- 
rassic limestone, all belong to a single species 
of the genus Tetragon olepis. An entire shoal 
seems to have been destroyed at once, at a place 
where the waters were either contaminated with 
some noxious impregnation, or overcharged with 
heat.* 
In the same manner also, we may imagine 
deposits from muddy water, mixed perhaps with 
noxious gases, to have formed by their sediments 
a succession of thick beds of marl and clayi 
such as those of the Lias formation ; and at the 
same time to have destroyed, not only the Tes- 
tacea and lower orders of animals inhabiting the 
bottom, but also the higher orders of marine 
creatures within the regions thus invaded. Evi- 
dence of the fact of vast numbers of fishes and 
saurian s having met with sudden death and 
immediate burial, is also afforded by the state 
of entire preservation in which the bodies e 
hundreds of them are often found in the Lias- 
* The proximity of this rock to the Vesuvian chain of vol- 
canic eruptions, offers a cause sufficient to have imparted eithef 
of these destructive powers to the waters of a limited spac® 
in the bay of Naples, at a period preceding those intense vol- 
canic actions which prevailed in this district during the deposi- 
tion of the Tertiary strata, and which are still going on there. 
