The destroying agency of the flood came within two hundred yards of the precipice on which the beautiful temple of Vesta stands; but fortunately this precious relic of antiquity was spared, while the wreck of modern structures was hurled down the abyss. Vesta, it will be remembered, in the heathen mythology, personified the stability of the earth; and when the Samian astronomer, Aristarchus, first taught that the earth revolved on its axis, and round the sun, he was publicly accused of impiety, "for removing the everlasting Vesta from her place." Playfair observed, that when Hutton ascribed instability to the earth's surface, and represented the continents which we inhabit as the theatre of incessant change and movement, his antagonists, who regarded them as unalterable, assailed him in a similar manner with accusations founded on religious prejudices.[280] We might appeal to the excavating power of the Anio as corroborative of one of the most controverted parts of the Huttonian theory; and if the days of omens had not gone by, the geologists who now worship Vesta might regard the late catastrophe as portentous. We may, at least, recommend the modern votaries of the goddess to lose no time in making a pilgrimage to her shrine, for the next flood may not respect the temple. _Excavation of rocks by running water._--The rapidity with which even the smallest streams hollow out deep channels in soft and destructible soils is remarkably exemplified in volcanic countries, where the sand and half-consolidated tuffs opposed but a slight resistance to the torrents which descend the mountain-side. After the heavy rains which followed the eruption of Vesuvius in 1824, the water flowing from the Atrio del Cavallo cut, in three days, a new chasm through strata of tuff and ejected volcanic matter, to the depth of twenty-five feet. I found the old mule-road, in 1828, intersected by this new ravine. The gradual erosion of deep chasms through some of the hardest rocks, by the constant passage of running water, charged with foreign matter, is another phenomenon of which striking examples may be adduced. Illustrations of this excavating power are presented by many valleys in central France where the channels of rivers have been barred up by solid currents of lava, through which the streams have re-excavated a passage, to the depth of from twenty to seventy feet and upwards, and often of great width. In these cases there are decisive proofs that neither the sea, nor any denuding wave or extraordinary body of water, has passed over the spot since the melted lava was consolidated. Every hypothesis of the intervention of sudden and violent agency is entirely excluded, because the cones of _loose_ scoriæ, out of which the lavas flowed, are oftentimes at no great elevation above the rivers, and have remained undisturbed during the whole period which has been sufficient for the hollowing out of such enormous ravines.