Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/756

736 falls upon towns and the neighborhoods of mountains. This is to be accounted for on the electric theory, from these places offering points for the escape of the fluid which naturally flies there to seek a thoroughfare, so to speak. From this cause we have St. Elmo's fire on the masts and yards of ships at sea, and De Saussure's experiences of the escape of the fluid from an Alpine peak. Hence we may infer that towns and mountains create centres of force in these convulsions.

At Münster, in Germany, an earthquake began on December 8, 1612, and lasted for several days. During the shocks, Billenelt Castle, near Münster, built on a rock, "sunk more than the depth of two men's height," a breach being made in the rock itself. The destruction by earthquake and lightning seems to have been great. "If any," says a chronicler of the catastrophe, "have so much heart left as to lift up his hands to heaven, he is presently struck down by thunder and lightning;" "fiery clouds and a direful comet" alarmed the superstitious. The state of the atmosphere must have been very peculiar, even allowing for exaggeration, since the writer referred to states that the appearance of the stars was "changed into prodigious, dreadful, fiery meteors." During this calamity, earthquake, thunder, and lightning, occurred twice every day, but not at the same time.

The earthquake of 1638 disturbed both Etna and Stromboli, causing them to send forth flame and smoke, as though the sources of the convulsion descended deeper than their roots. Father Kircher describes the disappearance of the city of Euphemia, which he was endeavoring to reach at this time, and was in sight of. After a violent shock, on rising from the ground and looking toward the city, he saw only a frightful dark cloud, which surprised him and his companions, as the sky was otherwise very serene. Waiting until the cloud had passed away, they found Euphemia had totally disappeared, and its place a putrid lake.

The earthquakes of 1692, in Jamaica, and 1693, in Sicily, present very strong evidences of general electric disturbance in the globe at those times. One evening in February, 1692, at Alari, in Sicily, the village seemed to the country-people to be in flames. The fire, as they imagined, began by little and increased for about a quarter of an hour, when all the houses in the place appeared to be enveloped in one flame which lasted about six minutes and then began to decay, as from want of more fuel. Many who ran to render assistance observed this increase as they passed along the road, but on entering the village found all to be a delusion. Such appearances of fire and light occur in other localities subject to earthquake, e. g., at Cowrie, Perthshire, one morning before daybreak, in 1842, the light is stated to have been so brilliant that birds were distinguished on the trees. Again, in Sicily, about the 15th of May, following the incident at Alari, two hours before sunset, the atmosphere being very clear, the heavens appeared on a sudden all on fire, without any flashes of lightning or the