s, and in the vaults of a
country-house in the suburbs were the skeletons of seventeen persons,
who appear to have fled there to escape from the shower of ashes. They
were found inclosed in an indurated tuff, and in this matrix was
preserved a perfect cast of a woman, perhaps the mistress of the house,
with an infant in her arms. Although her form was imprinted on the rock,
nothing but the bones remained. To these a chain of gold was suspended,
and on the fingers of the skeletons were rings with jewels. Against the
sides of the same vault was ranged a long line of earthen amphorae.

The writings scribbled by the soldiers on the walls of their barracks,
and the names of the owners of each house written over the doors, are
still perfectly legible. The colors of fresco paintings on the stuccoed
walls in the interior of buildings are almost as vivid as if they were
just finished. There are public fountains decorated with shells laid out
in patterns in the same fashion as those now seen in the town of Naples;
and in the room of a painter, who was perhaps a naturalist, a large
collection of shells was found, comprising a great variety of
Mediterranean species, in as good a state of preservation as if they had
remained for the same number of years in a museum. A comparison of these
remains, with those found so generally in a fossil state would not
assist us in obtaining the least insight into the time required to
produce a certain degree of decomposition or mineralization; for,
although under favorable circumstances much greater alteration might
doubtless have been brought about in a shorter period, yet the example
before us shows that an inhumation of seventeen centuries may sometimes
effect nothing towards the reduction of shells to the state in which
fossils are usually found.

The wooden beams in the houses at Herculaneum are black on the exterior,
but, when cleft open, they appear to be almost in the state of ordinary
wood, and the progress made by the whole mass towards the state of
lignite is scarcely appreciable. Some animal and vegetable substances of
more perishable kinds have of course suffered much change and decay, yet
the state of preservation of these is truly remarkable. Fishing-nets are
very abundant in both cities, often quite entire; and their number at
Pompeii is the more interesting from the sea being now, as we stated, a
mile distant. Linen has been found at Herculaneum, with the texture well
defined; an