... 79 that not only destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but also half the cone of Vesuvius - the present day Vesuvius consists of, "an old strato-volcano (Mount Somma) which terminated its activity with a summit caldera collapse, and the recent cone (Mount Vesuvius) that has grown inside the Somma caldera and whose last eruption dates back to 1944 (Tazieff and Sabroux 1983: 149)." The present day Vesuvius is surrounded by many towns and villages, and is home to nearly 4 million people; if the volcano had not arisen here, the land would not have been able to support, "more than a tenth of the present population (Lobley c.1889: 48)." The dense population surrounding Vesuvius, and other volcanic regions, is owed to the extremely fertile soil that is provided by volcanic rock. The productiveness of the soils of volcanic districts is due to the decomposition of volcanic materials, which, containing ...

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