causes, and the manner of their extraordinary operations, which perhaps might be of use in accounting for damps in mines and other places, which induced me to give them a place here, as matters that could not be unacceptable to the curious. Shepherd of Banbury's Rules.

XAVALANCHES.

THE avalanches, or snow-balls, which sometimes gather and roll down the sides of the mountains on the Alps, are equally surprising and dangerous to travellers; they are occasioned by the dropping of a quantity of snow from some prominent rock, which increases as it falls down the steep declivities, till it becomes of a prodigious size, and sweeps away houses, trees, men, horses, or whatever it meets with in its passage. As they fall suddenly, and with great rapidity, it is very difficult for passengers to avoid them; and nothing is able to resist their force till they get to the bottom, where they are generally broken in pieces by the violence of the shock. Some of these mountain snow-balls have been found, by measuring their track, to be above a hundred yards in diameter; and one of them, in the year 1695, fell upon a village in the night time, and destroyed eleven houses, besides barns and stables, burying men, women, and cattle in the ruins. These terrible accidents are sometimes produced even by the leaping of a chamois, the firing of a pistol, or any noise that shakes the air, and loosens the snow from the rocks above: for which reason, in places of the greatest danger, people are careful to travel early, and with all possible silence. Some of these avalanches, indeed, are not so destructive; for consisting of new fallen snow, driven by the wind, they are lighter, and persons buried under them may live a long time without being suffocated, and are often relieved by men kept in pay to clear the roads, and give assistance on such occasions.

Mrs. Charlotte Smith pathetically describes these falling masses of snow in the following lines:

Where cliffs arise by winter crown'd,

And through dark groves of pine around,

Down the deep chasms the snow-fed torrents foam;
Within some hollow, shelter'd from the storms,
The peasant of the Alps his cottage forms,
And builds his humble, happy home.

But absent from this calmn abode,

Dark thunder gathers round his road,
Wild raves the wind, the arrowy lightnings flash;
Returning quick the murmuring rocks among,
His faint heart trembles as he winds along:
Alarmed! he listens to the crash

Of rifted ice! Oh, man of woe!
O'er his dear cot-a mass of snow,
By the storm sever'd from the cliff above,

Has fallen, and buried in its marble breast
All that for him, lost wretch, the world possess'd,

His home, his happiness, his love!

Aghast the heart-struck mourner stands, Glaz'd are his eyes, convuls'd his hands, O'erwhelming anguish checks his labouring breath; Crush'd by despair's intolerable weight, Frantic, he seeks the mountain's giddiest height, And headlong seeks relief in death.

BURNING MOUNTAINS.

MOUNT VESUVIUS.

MOUNT VESUVIUS is situated at the distance of five Italian miles from the city of Naples, and is justly accounted one of the most dreadful volcanos in the world. Its declivity towards the sea is richly clothed with vines and fruit-trees, the circumambient air is clear and salubrious, and the neighbouring plain affords a most delightful prospect; but the ascent to the summit is painfully tedious: and, after walking two miles over a kind of burnt earth, mixed with calcined stones and cinders, the tra

veller arrives at a naked plain, from severa parts of which issues a sulphurous smoke, and in the centre of it rises another hill, shaped like a sugar loaf, and of more difficult access than the former.

At the summit of this hill is a vast month, or cavity, about 400 yards in diameter at the top, but shelving down on all sides like a funnel, whence proceeds a continual smoke, and sometimes those astonishing eruptions of flame, ashes, and burning matter, which fill the neighbouring villages with consternation. Every time it darts forth its flames, and pours forth its liquid matter, the exterior form of the mountain, as well as its height, receive considerable alterations. In a small plain, resembling a half moon, situated between the mountain of cinders and a semicircular theatre of steep rocks, 200 feet high, M. de la Condamine viewed closely the breathing holes, opened in the sides of the mountain, through which, at the time of the late eruption, those torrents of inflamed matter had escaped, to which they give the name of lava, and with which all this valley is filled. This singular spectacle presents us, says he, with the appearance of metallic waves grown cold, and in a state of congelation. One may form a slight idea of it, by supposing to ourselves a sea of thick and tenacious matter, the waves of which were beginning to subside. This sea had its isles, which are solitary masses, resembling hollow spongy rocks, opening into arcades and grottos fantastically formed, beneath which the burning liquid matter had opened itself magazines or reservoirs, similar to furnaces. These grottos, with their vaults and pillars, all the pure work of nature, were loaded with scoriæ, suspended around them in the form of stalactites, or irregular clusters of grapes, of various colours.

In ancient history, we find dismal accounts of the devastations occasioned by this volcano; and, in later ages, we meet with instances of its raging with extraordinary fury. In the year 1694 there was a violent eruption, which continued great part of the month of April, and threw up ashes, stones, &c., with such force, that some of them reached Benevento, nearly thirty miles distant. A prodigious quantity of melted minerals was likewise thrown out of the mouth, and ran slowly down the sides