The inhabitants of Adria have formed exaggerated pretensions, in many respects, as to the high antiquity of their city, though it is undeniably one of the most ancient in Italy, as it gave name to the sea which once washed its walls. By some researches made in its interior and its environs, a stratum of earth has been found mixed with fragments of Etruscan pottery, and with nothing whatever of Roman manufacture. Etruscan and Roman pottery are found mixed together in a superior bed, on the top of which the vestiges of a theatre have been discovered. Both of these beds are far below the level of the present soil. I have seen at Adria very curious collections, in which these remains of antiquity are separately classed; and having, some years ago, observed to the viceroy, that it would be of great importance, both to history and geology, to make a thorough search into these buried remains at Adria, carefully noticing the levels in comparison with the sea, both of the primitive soil, and of the successive alluvial beds, his Highness entered warmly into my ideas; but I know not whether these propositions have been since carried into effect. Following the coast, after leaving Hatria, which was situated at the bottom of a small bay or gulf, we find to the south a branch of the _Athesis_ or Adige, and of the _Fossa Philistina_, of which the remaining trace corresponds to what might have been the Mincio and Tartaro united, if the Po had still run to the south of Ferrara. We next find the _Delta Venetum_, which seems to have occupied the place where the lake or lagune of Commachio is now situated. This delta was traversed by seven branches of the _Eridanus_ or Po, formerly called also the _Vadis Padus_ or _Podincus_; which river, at the diramification of these seven branches, and upon its left or northern bank, had a city named _Trigoboli_, whose site could not be far from where Ferrara now stands. Seven lakes, inclosed within this delta, were called _Septem Maria_, and Hatria was sometimes denominated _Urbs Septem Marium_, or the city of the seven seas or lakes. Following the coast from Hatria to the northwards, we come to the principal mouth of the _Athesis_ or Adige, formerly named _Fossa Philistina_, and afterwards _Estuarium Altini_, an interior sea, separated by a range of small islands from the Adriatic Gulf, in the middle of which was a cluster of other small isles, called _Rialtum_, and upon this archipelago the city of Venice is now seated. The _Estuarium Altini_ is what is now called the Lagune of Venice, and no longer communicates with the sea, except by five passages, the small islands of the Archipelago having been united into a continuous dike.