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_Glacier covered by a lava-stream._--A remarkable discovery was made on
Etna in 1828 of a great mass of ice, preserved for many years, perhaps
for centuries, from melting, by the singular accident of a current of
red-hot lava having flowed over it. The following are the facts in
attestation of a phenomenon which must at first sight appear of so
paradoxical a character. The extraordinary heat experienced in the South
of Europe, during the summer and autumn of 1828, caused the supplies of
snow and ice which had been preserved in the spring of that year, for
the use of Catania and the adjoining parts of Sicily and the island of
Malta, to fail entirely. Great distress was consequently felt for want
of a commodity regarded in those countries as one of the necessaries of
life rather than an article of luxury, and the abundance of which
contributes in some of the larger cities to the salubrity of the water
and the general health of the community. The magistrates of Catania
applied to Signor M. Gemmellaro, in the hope that his local knowledge of
Etna might enable him to point out some crevice or natural grotto on the
mountain, where drift-snow was still preserved. Nor were they
disappointed; for he had long suspected that a small mass of perennial
ice at the foot of the highest cone was part of a large and continuous
glacier covered by a lava-current. Having procured a large body of
workmen, he quarried into this ice, and proved the superposition of the
lava for several hundred yards, so as completely to satisfy himself that
nothing but the subsequent flowing of the lava over the ice could
account for the position of the glacier. Unfortunately for the
geologist, the ice was so extremely hard, and the excavation so
expensive, that there is no probability of the operations being renewed.

On the first of December, 1828, I visited this spot, which is on the
southeast side of the cone, and not far above the Casa Inglese; but the
fresh snow had already nearly filled up the new opening, so that it had
only the appearance of the mouth of a grotto. I do not, however,
question the accuracy of the conclusion of Signer Gemmellaro, who, being
well acquainted with all the appearances of drift-snow in the fissures
and cavities of Etna, had recognized, even before the late excavations,
the peculiarity of the position of the ice in this locality. We may
suppose that, at the commencement of the eruption, a deep mass of
drift-snow had been