Jounston-Lavis—The Eruption of Vesuvius in April, 1906. 189 
the crops was infinitesimal; but all the rest of the mountain slopes, and far away 
on the Campanian plain in a north-east direction all the crops of annuals and 
herbaceous plants, were destroyed. The vines, fruit, and other trees and bushes 
were practically uninjured, except in the lapilli-strewed region, where the stems 
that were not approaching the vertical were bruised, and on the upper part of the 
mountain almost stripped by the attrition of the falling stones. That even the 
essential ejecta had lost most of their heat when they reached the ground even as near 
as the crest of Somma, was shown by the absence of any roasting or carbonizing 
of the plants buried in them. I dug out at the Canale di Arena the stems of 
herbaceous weeds, broken and reduced to shreds, but showing no effect of great 
heat. Even at Ottajano, early in May, the vines were sprouting, and farmers were 
planting cabbages and lettuces in the newly ejected dust after its first washing by 
the heavy rains at the end of April that removed part of the saline constituents. 
In October I was struck on my return to Naples with the little difference in the 
vegetation from what one would see in any other year at the same season. 
Even if a considerable area has been ruined for agriculture by the new lava, I 
think I can safely say that a larger area has been converted from ragged old lava- 
streams into cultivable land. Since 1822 most of the eruptions of Vesuvius have 
consisted principally of the outpouring of lavas, which have covered large areas of 
the mountain slopes with a surface unsuitable to the growth of crops. The last 
eruption has spread such a thick mantle of lapilli and dust over the ragged lava- 
surfaces that in a few years they will be thickly clothed with vegetation. That 
awtul field of wild desolation, the Atrio del Cavallo, and the Val d’ Inferno, that 
was almost impenetrable even to man, could a few months after the eruption be 
ridden, or even driven, over in all directions. 
MINERALOGY OF THE ERUPTION. 
The different mineral species that a collector would appropriate when visiting 
Vesuvius after the late eruption may be easily classified into two definite groups. 
In the first we should place all those species that were generated during the 
eruption, or subsequent to it, and as the result of it. This section might be again 
subdivided into those formed in the lava and scoria, and those deposited either in 
fissures of the lava or in the fumaroles of the cone and its neighbourhood. In the 
second section are all those products that enter into the composition of the accessory 
or accidental ejecta. Of these latter very little will be said, hecause they do not 
show anything that is not common to other eruptions, and their presence amongst 
the ejecta is quite a fortuitous one. Prof. Lacroix has paid special attention to 
them from a purely mineralogical aspect,* extending our knowledge of that 
* << Kitude Minéralogique des produits silicatés de l’Eruption du Vésuye (Avril 1906),”’? &c.—Nouv. 
Archives du Museum, 4 sér., tome ix. 1907. 
2G 2 
