The principal feature seems to have consisted of an open portico, of four beautiful columns in front, and two columns and two antæ behind. Three of the front columns are still standing. They are of cipollino, containing crystals of quartz, and about 4 feet 10 inches in diameter. The lower part of the shaft, for about 8 feet, is very perfect, for 5 feet more it is perforated in all directions by a marine shell-fish; the upper part is without perforations, and considerably weatherworn. This upper part, we know, was long exposed to the weather, the lower part was protected by being buried in the earth till about 1750; but how the central part of the column should have been under water, and perforated by the pholas, while still erect in its place, is a standing puzzle for antiquaries and naturalists. The cell was small, open in front, or only inclosed by an iron grating, and terminated by a semicircular apsis, containing one large and deep niche and two smaller ones. An upright joint divides the circular part of the work from the rest, and it is possible it may have been an addition. Part of the variegated marble pavement remains. In front of each of the four external columns there was a pedestal, probably to support a statue, and before the middle intercolumniation is a ring, to which it has been supposed that the victims intended for sacrifice were attached. The court in which this portico or temple stood, has also been surrounded by columns, and remaining fragments of these, and of their entablature, show that some of them were acted upon by the pholas, in the same manner as the principal columns; while others were perhaps thrown down and covered with earth, before this singular phænomenon took place. There is neither capital nor entablature remaining to the larger columns; the bases are Corinthian, and from these, and the workmanship of the columns, we may judge of the excellence of the architecture, both in taste and in execution. The remains of the court are also of the Corinthian order, but the columns have Attic bases, and both the style and execution of the ornament are decidedly inferior to those of the principal building, and announce a more recent date. A large circle of columns on a raised platform, occupied the centre of this colonnaded court. They appear too slender to have supported a domical covering, and some remaining fragments of a circular entablature, which are finished alike on both sides, induce me to believe that they merely formed a screen round the platform. In front of each column, but not rising so high as the platform, there is a pedestal, which was doubtless covered with marble. In two of the spaces between these pedestals are as many marble cylinders, which have been called altars, by those who did not observe that they were hollow; and mouths of wells, by those who did not observe that they were closed at the bottom; they are strictly marble tubs, but