Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/166

Rh not admit of precise determination. There are many old fissures, and difficulty in deciding which are new.

Fissures at the east and S.E. flank of the town, gave some very discordant results, showing wave-paths 16° W. of north, and others south to north; but, from the situation, these are, no doubt, all local oscillations or reflected waves.

The Agricultural College, which is situated on tolerably level ground to the west of the city, has its long axis 72° E. of north. There are fissures in the south walls (external), and at both sides of the S.E. quoin, in front; and the whole south front wall has given out a little. Other fissures in north and south walls, on the west side of the building. All are recent, and the average wave-path that they give, is 30° E. of north to 32° E. of north.

I could get no measures of emergence of a trustworthy character except from this building, and from the Church of Mortcelli, both of which gave pretty clear indications; the former 15° emergence from the S.W., the latter 16° 20' from the same.

Very many of the smaller buildings were fissured nearly vertically, and in some instances I could detect no structural cause determinant of that direction, and therefore conclude that there was some great local oscillation of the ground beneath Melfi, in one nearly horizontal path.

The Intendente told me, that at Ascoli, a town about fourteen miles north of Melfi, the shock had been felt almost precisely from south to north. He had a pendulum clock in his entrance hall, vibrating in a plane nearly east and west, which was not stopped.

The precise time of the first shock of 16th December was determined here, with greater accuracy, than anywhere

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