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When I visited Monte Bolca, in company with Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1828, we ascertained that the fish-bearing beds were of Eocene date, containing well-known species of Nummulites, and that a long series of submarine volcanic eruptions, evidently contemporaneous, had produced beds of tuff, which are cut through by dikes of basalt.
Nothing in natural history appears more worthy the consideration of the learned world, than does this repository of petrefactions, so uncommon that scarcely any thing except the testimony of one's own eyes could convince one that flying fish, natives, and intending to remain inhabitants, of the Pacific Ocean, are daily dug out of the bowels of Monte Bolca near Verona, where they must doubtless have been driven by the deluge, as no less than omnipotent power and general concussion could have sufficed to seize and fix them for centuries in the hollow cavities of a rock at least seventy-two miles from the nearest sea.
The general dearth, therefore, of fish in the different members of the Eocene series, Upper, Middle, and Lower, might induce a hasty reasoner to conclude that there was a poverty of ichthyic forms during this period; but when a local accident, like the volcanic eruptions of Monte Bolca, occurs, proofs are suddenly revealed to us of the richness and variety of this great class of vertebrata in the Eocene sea.
Heer has mentioned several species which are common to this Alum Bay flora and that of Monte Bolca, near Verona, so celebrated for its fossil fish, and where the strata contain nummulites and other Middle Eocene fossils.
Allioni tells me, that Monte Bolca has been long acknowledged to contain the fossils, now diligently digging out under the patronage of some learned naturalists at Verona.
Associated with the marls and limestones of Monte Bolca are beds containing lignite and shale with numerous plants, which have been described by Unger and Massalongo, and referred by them to the Eocene period. That scarcely any one of the Monte Bolca fish should have been found in any other locality in Europe, is a striking illustration of the extreme imperfection of the palaeontological record.
He had little reverence for the petrefactions of Monte Bolca I perceived, which he considered as mere lufus naturæ. He shewed me poor Petrarch's tomb from his observatory, bid me look on Sir Isaac's full-length picture in the room, and said, the world would see no more such men. Of our Maskelyne, however, no man could speak with more esteem, or expressions of generous friendship.
"Count Alfieri, sir," he said, "has doubtless explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca." Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction.
It has been supposed by some observers that there is an alternation of a contemporaneous sheet of lava with fresh-water strata in the hill of Gergovia, near Clermont. The fissile limestone of Monte Bolca, near Verona, has for many centuries been celebrated in Italy for the number of perfect Ichthyolites which it contains.
In the mineral kingdom, independently of the numerous and select choice of all the specimens, are to be remarked as objects of particular curiosity, the petrifactions of crocodiles' bones found in the mountain of St. Pierre at Maestricht, and the collection of impressions of fishes from Mount Bolca, near Verona.
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