Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/442



has repeated the observation, made often before, that hogs showed symptoms of uneasiness previous to the shock. All domestic, and many wild animals, evinced the alarmed condition that has been so often recorded. I could not find that any dead birds, shaken to the ground while sleeping on their roosts, had been remarked. I did not, however, press many inquiries under this head, having more than enough of far more important matter on hand.

The only alleged case of nausea felt by human beings at the moment of the shock was that mentioned at Naples, and it appeared to me to have been due to nervous excitement and alarm.

Under this head it may be of some geological interest to notice, that rats and rabbits, though burrowing animals, were killed and entombed by some of the landslips, gripped obviously by the suddenly moved soil before they could escape, and so suffocated. Snakes and torpid lizards were also killed by rock dislocations, facts which rather tend to indicate that these animals at least had no premonitions of the coming shock. The isolated occurrence of their organic remains in earthy limestone rock, without any obvious cause of entombment, at some remote future, presents matter for curious consideration.