308 Supposed Connection of Met em' ic Phenomena^ S^c. 



positive volcanic matter in stones that have fallen at a time 

 when no volcano has been in the immediate vicinity. We 

 know, also, that volcanic ejections have been carried even 

 from Vesuvius and Etna as far as Constantinople; and that 

 there must be thousands of earthquakes and volcanic erup- 

 tions, of which we can know neither the character nor the 

 existence. 



How volcanic agents are primarily called into action, I 

 do not profess to understand : the object of these researches 

 (if such they may be called) is not to speculate on the origin, 

 but the supposed effects, of terrestrial derangement. That 

 electricity is intimately connected with certain states of the 

 earth, and that those states or those effects do modify the 

 variations of the atmosphere, there is no question : but whe- 

 ther electricity be itself a first cause of earthquakes, or, like 

 magnetism (to which it appears to be akin, if not identically 

 the same thing under another form), merely a secondary 

 cause, produced by volcanic action, itself reproducing corre- 

 sponding phenomena, I do not intend to moot. It is suf- 

 ficient for my purpose, to endeavour to show, as I think I 

 have satisfactorily shown, that the meteors which have been 

 such extraordinary objects of interest during the last few 

 years, especially during 1832, 1833, 1834, are, as far as the 

 produced examples warrant us in believing, more likely to 

 have arisen in consequence of the increased action in the 

 interior of the earth, as developed by earthquakes and vol- 

 canic emanations, than from any other cause with which we 

 are acquainted. Should it ever happen that we actually 

 ascertain every substance contained in the earth, the interior 

 of which may be of different construction to its crust, which 

 appears to be a huge galvanic and electrical apparatus, it will 

 then be time to speculate on the moon or the planets, should 

 a substance which the chemists of that day may not actually 

 know, come within the reach of their crucibles and tests. 



Stanley Green, May 16. 1834. W. B. Clarke. 



Facts supplementary to Essay No. 2. p. 1 93. to 202. — Locusts, 

 p. 195. By recent letters and the Canto7i Register it appears 

 that locusts, in 1833, infested several provinces in China, 

 especially the northern. In 1834, they appeared, of immense 

 size and in vast hordes, and were exhibited in the shops at 

 Canton. Hecker (p. 29, 30.) relates the same thing of the 

 same provinces of China respecting the years 1336 and 1337, 

 at the commencement of the Black Death. 



