Page:The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious.djvu/19

 to meet with springs, and currents of water, every where. Often they ruin, and divert springs another way, only by digging into the earth for foxes, and the like. Whenever they dig for wells, in any kind of earth, they commonly find springs. The colliers, and workers of mines, are oblig'd to drain the waters off with very great expence.

These are circumstances not favorable to subterraneous fires being in the earth in abundance; much less to their being the cause of earthquakes. And further, we cannot possibly think of earthquakes doing their work that way, without absolutely ruining the whole system of springs, and fountains, throughout the whole country, where they pass. But all this is quite contrary to fact even where an earthquake has been repeatedly. For an instance from home.

On Wednesday, April 6, 1580, about six in the evening, just such another earthquake was felt in London and around it, at these two we have seen. Another exactly similar in 1692. In all these four, no houses thrown down, no springs disturb'd thereby, no sensible eruptions nor smells.

These considerations I apply only to this little inconsiderable space, of a circle 30 miles diameter, as with us. But what is that, to the earthquakes we read of in history? In the