A correspondent of the '"Manchester Guardian" writes:
At Agnano, near Naples, where the British Vice Consul was recently stabbed, is the famous Grotto del} Cane—''the dog's grotto." Mr. Goldie and a lady were walking on the traverse, or path, which leads up the cliff in which is the grotto. The place is, as is well known, a natural spring of carbonic acid gas issuing from a hole in the rock. A low entrance, hardly a man's height, and a long passage into the bowels of the hill are all that one sees on approaching what Jeho - Evelyn called Charon's Cave. A white mist rises from the floor and the ground recedes inwards. One can descend: the first three steps and no more if you go farther the exhalations mount to your feet, knees, and then waist high; in another step they would reach your mouth and render you a corpse indeed. The air is cold, but your lower limbs are bathed in sweat.
Two years ago a goat fell in from the cliff and was found dead at the entrance. The place was known tu Pliny, who speaks of it in his Natural History. Many tales are told of the experiments made. King Charles VIII of France drove in a donkey, which died immediately. Don Pedro di Toledo forceg galley slaves to go in, with the same result. M. de Tournon, a Frenchman, tried to chip a piece off the roof. but was overpowered by the vapours, His companions threw him in the lake, but he did not, like the dogs, recover. William Lithgow, a Scotsman, boasts in 1610 of having been to the end of the cave and brought back two stones, but admits that no one believed his tale. Dr. Edward Browne, son of Sir Thomas, writes: "I went in and, finding no inconvenience from the gases either by standing or putting my hand to the place where the dog died, was about to put in my head also, when, to the hindrance of my satisfaction, my companions and the guide furiously tore me out of the grotto, and without much persuasion would have thrown me into the Jake also." Addison made a series of experiments with a viper, a pistol, gunpowder, a sealed phial, and mercury.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.