Show STUDENTS OF VESUVIUS men of science who have held to their posts amidst the awful upheavals sig matteucci director ot the royal observatory in refusing to quit his perilous post near the crater ot ve only followed the example of his predecessors during the bremen dous outbreak of april 1872 sig palmier stood by his instruments amid smoke and showers of red hot stones while two immense streams of lava diverted by the rock on which the observatory stood flowed by on each side the first student of besu alus of whom there Is any record the elder pliny may be said to have start ed the of scientific coolness it Is known on the authority of his nephew that it was philosophical curiosity which led him to his doom on the plain in that awful year of 79 A D when hastening to the place from which others fled with the utmost ter the nephew wrote he steered his direct course to the point of dan ger and with EO much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and figure of that dreadful scene the brave old phi lo sopher retired to rest that night in the house of a distracted friend pliny was so little disturbed that he fell into a deep sleep for being pret ty fat and breathing hard those who attended without actually heard him snore but vesuvius increased in violence and the party had to take to the open fields with pillows on their heads tied on with napkins as a krotec alon against the storm of stones but after all vesuvius dealt mercifully with the man who left his safe at sea for the work of study and research tor his body was afterward found as the famous letter to tacitus tells without my marks of violence upon it exactly in the same posture in which he tell and looking more like a man asleep than dead |