738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" from morning till night, there was never heard so violent a storm 

 of thunder and lightning, as if heaven and earth had been mixing to- 

 gether ; " the town-house and several other houses were destroyed by 

 it. The peasants on the neighboring hills observed that this light- 

 ning had burnt the vines so that no crop could be expected for the 

 season. 



The earthquake of London, 1749, also exhibited strong symptoms 

 of electric action. The year abounded with thunder and lightning, 

 coruscations frequently appeared in the air, and the aurora removed 

 to the south, showing upon two occasions unusual colors. Dr. Ste- 

 phen Hales heard a rushing in his house which ended in an explosion 

 in the air as from a small cannon, and attributed it to tlie escape of 

 the fluid by the steeple of the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, ad- 

 joining. The Rev. J, H. Murray refers to the electrical disturbances 

 on the east coast of South America, contemporaneous with the great 

 earthquakes on the west coast in 1868, and considers them related. 

 He describes one storm, just at the time of the earthquake, as giving 

 " an idea of what the bombardment of Sevastopol must have been 

 like." 



The phenomena of seaquake are of a similar character. We have 

 ourselves seen electric clouds thrown into auroral forms contempora- 

 neously with the disturbance of the sea at another locality. 



Examples might be extensively multiplied, but the above would 

 seem sufficient to show that a leading cause of earthquake is electric 

 action, and that volcanoes sometimes produce the same by direct con- 

 vulsion, and at others by disturbing the electric equilibrium of a lo- 

 cality. English Mechanic. 



ANIMAL LIFE IN MADAGASCAE. 



THE large island of Madagascar has of late excited a special inter- 

 est among the lovers of natural history ; the richness of its soil 

 has been acknowledged, and the character of its vegetation and of 

 its animals classified. During the present century, Europeans liave 

 chiefly visited the northern part of the island, and expressed in glow- 

 ing language their admiration of its shores. The bay of Diego-Suarez, 

 which is situated in the most northerly point of the island, is spoken 

 of as one of the wonders of the world, and that of Passandava most 

 enchanting. This, however, is not a fair picture of the whole ; like 

 other islands, it presents very striking contrasts. A recent traveler, 

 M, E. Blanchard, who has visited certain parts of the island, chiefly 

 to explore its mineral resources, describes in his book (" L'lle de Ma- 

 dagascar," J. Claye, imprimeur) the great chain of mountains and the 



