is composed chiefly, like the southern
part of Sicily, of calcareo-argillaceous strata of great thickness,
containing marine shells. This clay is sometimes associated with beds of
sand and limestone. For the most part these formations resemble in
appearance and consistency the Subapennine marls, with their
accompanying sands and sandstones; and the whole group bears
considerable resemblance, in the yielding nature of its materials, to
most of our tertiary deposits in France and England. Chronologically
considered, however, the Calabrian formations are comparatively of
modern date, often abounding in fossil shells referable to species now
living in the Mediterranean.

We learn from Vivencio, that on the 20th and 26th of March, 1783,
earthquakes occurred in the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, and St. Maura;
and in the last-mentioned island several public edifices and private
houses were overthrown, and many people destroyed.

If the city of Oppido, in Calabria Ultra, be taken as a centre, and
round that centre a circle be described, with a radius of twenty-two
miles, this space will comprehend the surface of the country which
suffered the greatest alteration, and where all the towns and villages
were destroyed. The first shock, of February 5th, 1783, threw down, in
two minutes, the greater part of the houses in all the cities, towns,
and villages, from the western flanks of the Apennines in Calabria Ultra
to Messina in Sicily, and convulsed the whole surface of the country.
Another occurred on the 28th of March, with almost equal violence. The
granitic chain which passes through Calabria from north to south, and
attains the height of many thousand feet, was shaken but slightly by the
first shock, but more rudely by some which followed.

Some writers have asserted that the wave-like movements which were
propagated through the recent strata, from west to east, became very
violent when they reached the point of junction with the granite, as if
a reaction was produced where the undulatory movement of the soft strata
was suddenly arrested by the more solid rocks. But the statement of
Dolomieu on this subject is most interesting, and perhaps, in a
geological point of view, the most important of all the observations
which are recorded.[666] The Apennines, he says, which consist in great
part of hard and solid granite, with some micaceous and argillaceous
schists, form bare mountains with steep sides, and exhibit marks of
great