This is a hill or mount in the neighbourhood of Verona, in the north of Italy, celebrated for the uncommon abundance and remarkable variety of the organic remains which it exhibits, as well as for the striking relations these bear to minerals of volcanic origin. This spot has long attracted the attention of philosophic inquirers, and even excited the curiosity of the vulgar. Various collections of its petrifactions have been made, and a considerable number of labourers are occasionally employed in digging an. preparing specimens. There are many treatises purposely devoted to the description and arrangement of its fossils, to a minute examination of its geognostic relations, and to labo-ri)us disquisitions on the manner in which it must have been formed.

In the neighbourhood of the mount, and over a great part of the territory of Verona, there are seen undoubted products of volcanic eruptions, together with masses of petrified animal and vegetable substances. The hill itself presents a great variety and singular combination of mineral phenomena, of different origin and nature. Its greater proportion is composed of an aggregation of organic remains, and seems a cemetery of shells, fishes, marine animals, birds, and qua drupeds. Some of its beds consist of a range of certain species possessing a considerable similarity; while in others, animals of the most opposite habits, and inhabiting different regions of the globe, as well as different elements of nature, are strangely brought into contact, and confusedly blended in one heterogeneous mass. Shell-fish of the rivers and of the sea, corals, fishes of various kinds, insects, bones of different species of birds, remains of elephants, bears, and other quadrupeds, requiring for their existence different climates, are here united in an extraordinary assemblage. Connected with these, we find basaltic columns, scoriae, lava, and other volcanic productions. These facts lead us to conclude, that this spot has witnessed wonderful revolutions, and that it has been subject, at different periods of its history, or perhaps nearly at the same time, to the dominion of two powerful elements, of which the ravages only are now visible.