The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal; Exhibiting a View of the Progressive Discoveries and Improvements in the Sciences and the Arts Volume 21 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ...interruption, but when they reach its base they immediately ascend, and follow the inclination of the acclivity, at a high angle. At a certain height, which remains perfectly the same round the mountain, they stop, and then we observe, rising with a high inclination, the black leucitophyre beds of the walls of Somma, which continue to the summit. The boundary of the tuffa round the mountain is rendered distinctly visible from a distance by the little platform which results from this slight difference of inclination between the beds of tuffa and of leucitophyre; and indeed these relations which are of such high importance for the history of the whole, are beautifully exhibited, and in a manner as clear as it is picturesque, in the superb view of the volcano, and its neighlwurhood, obtained from the town of Naples. The height to which the tuffa ascends is about 1900 feet above the sea, both on the acclivity on the Somma and Ottajano side, and on that above Pompeii and Torre del Greco. Its limit is the long hill on which the well known house of the hermit is built. The upper part of the Somma, that without tuffa, rises The boundary of the tuffa is well marked in the two cuts on the pre-ceding page. 1500 feet higher. In. the whole plain of Naples the horizontal strata of tuffa rise only at one point to the height of 1419 feet, near Camaldoli of Pouzzoli, and there only for a very limited space. Their usual height in the plain never exceeds 800 feet above the sea, and that is not half the height to which they are elevated on the Somma. At the volcano, therefore, they are no longer in their original position, but have actually been elevated round an axis, which is the axis of the crater itself. It is not generally stated, that the strata of white...