247 
grey marie, in which existed several leaves of trees and of plants, 
many of which were, he says, indigenous to the South of France:, 
whilst others appeared to be foreign to the climate. Among these 
were also found the remains of fishes, which he ascertained to be idus, 
pinna ani radiis 13, ventre piano. 
The following particulars respecting the fossil fish of Monte Bolca 
and the circumstances under which they are found, as given by the 
Rev. Mr. Graydon, Transactions of the Irish Academy, Vol. v. p. 
281, are particularly interesting. 
Monte Bolca lies on the border of the Veronese territory, about fifty 
miles W.NVV. of the Lagunes of Venice, which is supposed to be the 
nearest sea. Its height has not been ascertained, but it is pretty con- 
siderable. It forms one of the chain, or ladder, of secondary hills, which 
from some distance from the adjoining Vicentine, rise gradually above 
one another, to the Alps of the bishopric of Trent. Great part of this 
tract has been considered by many naturalists as being covered with 
productions of extinct volcanoes ; but the supposed compact lava of the 
Vicentine and Veronese is wholly of the argillaceous genus, and of the 
traph or horn-blend species, resembling basalt : indeed, the summit 
of this hill itself was many years ago, discovered, by Abate Fortis, to 
be crowned with a great mass of tolerably defined columnar basalt. 
The whole of the hill, as far as I could observe, Mr. Graydon says, 
seems to becomposedof similar, orat leastof argillaceous matter, except 
the quarries in which the fish are found, which are calcareous, and lie 
at about half a mile from the summit. Besides the dissimilarity of these 
to the other materials of the hill, it is further important to remark, that 
they do not form a continued stratum, but lie in great and wholly de- 
tached and distinct masses, as it were accidentally imbedded in the side 
of the hill, set in a loose rubble of argillaceous and the same kind of cal- 
careous fragments, the whole, more or less, in a state of decomposition. 
What is most remarkable is, that these fish are described as the 
modern natives of various seas, most remote from each other, and not 
