in certain branches of philofophy, than any other ftate in Europe. Natural philofophy and natural history have here a brilliant lift of fuccefsful votaries, and the names of Bonnet, De Luc, De Sauffure, the two Trembleys, Le Sage, Mallet, Bertrand, Pictet, with feveral others of great merit, do high honour to the city of Geneva. They indeed confine themfelves pretty much to the branches of fcience already mentioned. Ancient literature has never been cultivated at Geneva with any remarkable ardor or fuccefs, and is now lefs in vogue than ever. The cafe is much the fame with fpeculative philofophy, which has only its celebrated Bonnet (nec pluribus imparem), and with the fcience, of natural law and jurifprudence, in which Burlamaqui has left no very eminent fucceffor, though the prefent inteftine divifions of that intoxicated bee-hive have produced a multitude of political publications of the firft merit. Wit, fagacity, and talent flourish in the hive, but wisdom is wanting. The foolifh bees, who had long been constructing their delicious honey-combs in one of the faireft fpots of nature's domain, are now ftinging each other to death, and the hive is threatened with ruin. Some fay that this is partly the effect of the enchantments of an old wizard, who refided long in their neighbourhood, while others attribute the fatal frenzy to their having drank too plentifully of the ambrofial juice of the flowers that adorned their habitation. Res adverfas adhuc TANTUM tulifti, fays a wife man in Tacitus, Res profpera acrioribus fimulis animum explorant. M. SULZER paffed fome days with M. Bonnet, at his country feat, and counted thefe days among the happieft of his life. No marvel-they were kindred fpirits. He mentions M. De Luc, with fingular expreffions of cfteem ;and no marvel again, for the fame reason. Thefe are philofophers, who do not pass their laborious lives in measuring and conning over fome fcraps and skirts of the drapery of NATURE, without any attention to her Author or her destination; and therefore in the eye of wisdom, which looks for objects of hope and felicity to unfinish'd man, they will always appear to be the only true philofophers:- the reft is only blowing bubbles with gaudy colours, which break in froth, and are gone for ever! The Reader will with pleasure follow M. SULZER in his paffage through Lyons to the South of France, except when he defcribes the filth and mifery that degrade the poor inhabitants in many parts of that beautiful region, arifing from the plagues of defpotifm and oppreffion. Our Author's accounts cannot be always either new or highly interefting, because these countries have been feen before him by other travellers, and have been well defcribed; nor can an exact journal always exhibit interefting objects or incidents. His defcription of the Hieres, is curious and inftructive. His account of Nice is pleafing and connoiffeur in the grand and majestic beauties of nature. M * ART. XIII. al M— sofar Lettere Odeporiche di Angelo Gualandris. În Venezia appresso Giam ΤΗ HESE Letters were written in the courfe of a journey, which the Author, under the patronage of the Riformatori of the University of Padua, undertook, in the years 1775-76, and 77. His great object was natural hiftory at large, but chiefly mineralogy, with all thofe arts and sciences which have any reference to it. He has certainly proved himself to be well qualified as an obferver of nature, as well as intimately acquainted with practical chemistry, and the great metallurgical operations. With thefe views he travelled in Lombardy, Switzerland, the Palatinate, Germany, France, and Great Britain. We shall select some of his obfervations as fpecimens of his manner, and of his Memoric Minero-Metallurgiche, which will be foon publifhed; and which, it is expected, will contain acceptable accounts of the mines, manufactories, and founderies which he had an opportunity of fecing and examining in this journey. The first letter, dated Agard, July 1, 1775, gives an account of the Valle Imperina, near Belluno, in the Venetian Letters written on the road, &c. Nn 2 1. serra * Hcept 11⁄2 ! in the 1th Sheet, written by Mr Wales, f inclosed in Brackets. terra firma. It lies between two fteep calcareous mountains, called 'Erta, on the one fide, and a leís elevated mountain called Riva, on the other. Its conftituent parts are schiftous, or quartzeous flate, which plainly appears to be the bafis of the limeftone, and is here, as in many other parts of the world, the matrix of copper pyrites. This copper ore is found in different old mines, which are ftill working, not in veins, but in large irregular heaps; and though reported to have formerly yielded fome filver in the upper part of the valley, yet it it does not at prefent exhibit the least appearance of this nobler metal. The loose detached lime, grit, and whetstones, which the Author obferved all along the brook that runs in the middle of this valley, and covering the just mentioned flate mountain, led him to fufpect that formerly it was covered entirely with calcareous ftrata; and that earthquakes, but chiefly the brooks which come from the higher mountains, have interrupted and washed them away. In the following Letter we have a circumftantial account of the new lake of Alega, nine or ten miles above Agord. It was produced within these last ten years by the ruins of a high mountain, which burying fome country houfes in the adjacent narrow valley, and choaking up the river Cordevole, changed part of valley into a large and deep lake. The mountain feems not to have been undermined by the water, for it was only its upper part, projecting and bending over the valley, which gave way and flipt down, perhaps because the ftrata, on which it refted, and which appear now bare on the top of the mountain, were too much inclined towards the valley. The erofion of fome intermediate ftratum, by a spring, which ran from that elevation of the mountain, may have co-operated to bring on this horrid downfal. Whatever was its caufe, itiftopped the course of the river; which, being kept back, formed a lake, and overflowed and drowned the fields, the forefts, and every thing under the level of the accumulated ruins, which, at last, it reached, and partly washed away. The lake which remains is about two miles long, and its greatest depth about 275 feet. The Author paffed over it in a barge, and beheld the tops of the drowned foreft almoft immediately under the furface of the water; he adds, "fo enormous a bafon of ftagnating water feems to threaten other confequences, which must prove as deftructive to the upper parts of the river. Running down into the lake upon a greatly inclined plane, it carries large quantities of loofe ftones, pebbles, and gravel along with it, which, by its diminished velocity, it muft depofit above the lake. The effect, already obferved, has been that the bed of the river is become remarkably higher than it was before; and that a village called Cavile will, to all appearance, be very foon buried in the the ever encreasing bed of the river. The ruins, which form the dike or weir of the lake, are a kind of compact limestone, interspersed with sparry glittering particles. These particles are not observable in the limeftone, pebbles, and gravel, which the river deposits beyond the lake; and which, as far up as Cavrile, appear to be mixed with the fame varieties of whetstone, and vitrefcent and volcanic stones, which I noticed on the road to this place. This proves that the mountains which surround the lake, are not all of them calcareous; those on the eastern fide feem to be gritty, and thofe to the weft of a schistous argillaceous nature. However that be, this lake, produced by the downfall of part of a mountain, and the concomitant circumftances, offer a plain explication of the origin of many other lakes; of the accumulation of pebbles, gravel, and ruins, on beds and plains of a quite different nature; of the enormous rifing of the river beds; of the confufion of pebbles and ruins, which are depofited without any order of specific gravity; of fome prodigious heaps of wood, and other vegetable substances, which appear buried under ground; and of many other curious phenomena. Some mountains are certainly washed quite away in that manner; and we must never loofe fight of similar ruins and effects, whenever we venture upon an idea of the former ftate of the mountains, and of the plains which we inhabit. How different may they not have been from what they are now! Rivers and brooks, that formerly ran over their tops have, by length of time, divided them, and cut and washed their way down to the level of the next valley, which however must have been the work of many ages." Let us obferve here, that applying this rational hypothefis to the pebble beds about London, and in the fouthern parts of the kingdom, our imagination is loft in the long immenfity of ages, which must have formed them from the ruins of mountains now levelled to the ground; not to mention that as long an im→ menfity of ages must be supposed to have accumulated or depofited these mountains at the bottom of the fea: for their fole remains, the fints and pebbles, contain a variety of marine bodies. Though the Thames, and the country around us, be proved to have undergone some alterations fince the times of Cefar, yet they are infignificant when compared to thofe which we muft fuppofe to have happened before. Lett. 3. In his tour to Brescia, to Ifeo, and Lovere, in the territory of Bergamo, his attention was chiefly taken up with the fingular nature of the ftrata which appear in the abrupt moun tains along the great lake of Ifeo, on the northernmoft end of which Lovere is fituated. It is furrounded with high mountains, that, as far as the Author could obferve, are calcareous. Their Nn3 ftrati 1 ftratification is different; the beds being very thin in fome, and very thick in others. Some dip to the weft, fome to the fouth. Near a place called Riva, they are bent and folded in a moft fingular manner; forming, as it were, as many sharp pyramids. At no great diftance they are perpendicular. So they are near Caftro. On the oppofite fhore they exhibit the fame pheno mera. Lett. 4. At Bergamo the Author examined fome collections of foffils of that country. It is famous for iron mines and ironworks; and produces a great variety of marble, pudding-ftones, and alabafter. From Bergamo he went two journies along the rivers Bremba and Serio, which running in narrow vallies, offered to him a new field of obfervations. Neither the mountains nor pebbles exhibited any marks of old volcanos. Near Botta he faw again fuch pyramidal limestone ftrata as he had obferved on the lake of Ifeo. At S. Pellegrino he faw the regular stratification of the adjacent mountains in the river-bed, and juftly concluded that formerly they must have been connected; in further confirmation of which, he found, on the declivity of one of the mountains, many ftratified pebbles, which corresponding with those in the prefent bed of the river, furnish a very strong proof of the alterations fpoken of in one of his other letters. Towards Piazza the lower ftrata of a mountain were obferved to be much inclined, and in that respect very different from the higher incumbent ones, which are in an horizontal pofition. In the iron-works at Piazza and Leena they have a fparry iron ore, which, flightly roafted or calcined, and mixed with fome limeftone, was reported to produce about 60 per 100. On the road to Fondra he obferved, firft, flate mountains, and then enormous ones of red granite rock, beyond which the flate, which contains the iron mines, appeared again. "The just mentioned granite rock forms very high mountains. It breaks into irregular maffes, which feem to affect a cubic form, though fometimes they appear to be divided into irregular scales. Its texture is a pafte of vitrefcent particles, and of little pebbles of the fame nature; all wrapt up and glued together by a reddifh pafte, in which fcarce any fragment of fhirl, mica, or other black fubftances, is to be diftinguished. Nor do thefe rocks convey any idea of ftratification. They have there a provincial name, and are called Seris; and fomne naturalifts have miltaken them for the red granitello, which widely differs from them in colour as well as other properties. On another excurfion to Bonaiù, in the valley di Scalve, the Author obferved, on the top of a calcareous mountain, at a place |