90 
NEWER PLIOCENE PERIOD. 
[Ch. vi r. 
here and there escaped the burning lavas, serve, by contrast, to 
heighten the desolation of the scene. When I visited the 
valley, nine years after the eruption of 1819, 1 saw hundreds of 
- trees, or rather the white skeletons of trees, on the borders of 
the black lava, the trunks and branches being all leafless, and 
deprived of their bark by the scorching heat emitted from the 
melted rock ; an image recalling those beautiful lines 
' As when heaven's fire 
Hath scath' d the forest oaks, or mountain pines, 
With singed top their stately growth, though hare, 
Stands on the blasted heath.' 
Form, composition, and origin of the Dikes.— -But without 
indulging the imagination any longer in descriptions of scenery, 
we may observe, that the dikes before mentioned form unques- 
tionably the most interesting geological phenomenon in the Val 
del Bove. 
No. 19. 
Dikes at (he base of the Serre del So/fizio, Etna. 
Some of these are composed of trachyte, others ot compact 
