Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/439



this head the superstitions of the ignorant, and the ignorance of the learned, leave more to be yet investigated than under any other, although it is one probably of very subordinate importance as respects future scientific "fruit." The only facts worthy of notice, that I was able to obtain, are those recorded of the unusual and diffused light, said to have struck the attention of many, both ignorant and lettered persons, in the region close about the seismic vertical, and for a radius of from five to eight miles round it. I can add nothing to this here, but the observation, that it remains for future discovery whether this may not have been some sort of earth light, as Humboldt expresses it, connected with developed electrical tension, produced by the tremendous pressures, amounting to thousands of millions of tons, then rapidly accumulating or suddenly acting on square miles of rock beneath.

The wind was calm, and the stars were not obscured at the moment of shock, and hence not for some time before or after it, as observed by Signor D'Errico. This calm and serenity, appear to have extended over the whole area shaken; it was the same at Naples. The oppressive