with Meteoric Phenomena and prevalent Disorders, 299 

 of those periodical winds to which other causes are duly 



assigned. 



The passage marked in italics, from the paper of Dr. 

 Zanotti seems not improperly paralleled by an extract from 

 the Lancet of the 26th of April, 1833 : — " We have heard it 

 remarked by no less than twenty respectable individuals, residing 

 in this metropolis and its suburbs, that an odour of a very 

 particular description prevailed over a large surface of London, 

 on, we believe, the 10th instant, just at the period when the 

 injluenza was at its height" 



To sum up all ; it would seem that there is nothing wanting 

 to establish the possibility, perhaps the probability, of my sup- 

 position, but testimony of a kind which will bear directly on 

 the point at issue. If the outburst of heated and gaseous 

 matters from the interior of the earth is not capable of pro- 

 ducing temporary derangement in the atmosphere, thereby 

 occasioning partial influences of unusual heat and cold, storms 

 of wind, and hail storms (which are electrical f), as well as 

 deleterious effects on the human constitution, producing the 

 symptoms associated with the late prevalent epidemics ; then, 

 of course, these observations are mere conjectural trifling : but 

 if the chimneys of steam engines, kitchens, and parlours, 

 pouring forth diurnal successions of carbonaceous matter in a 

 state of vapour (and, put them all together, what ratio does all 

 the smoke from all the fires in Christendom bear to the abun- 

 dance of destructive matters pumped up from below by a 

 single spasm of a single volcano in eruption ?), are said to have 

 influenced public health to such a degree, that the plague, which 

 may have been imported into London thousands of times 

 since the dolorous days of its triumph in 1665, has been ren- 

 dered harmless ; surely, a like power %, for worse as well as 

 better, may be assigned to those mightier chimneys of the 



* The Annates de Chimie, December, 1829, contain a memoir by M. 

 Lambert on the " causes of the earthquakes in Chile and Peru, with the 

 means of preventing their ravages," in which he wishes to make it ap- 

 pear that earthquakes and volcanoes depend on the sun. Bartholon, in 

 1779, advanced the notion that earthquakes were occasioned by a dis- 

 charge of electrical matter from the earth to the atmosphere. 



At Copiapo, it is said, the year is divided into three portions : — the 

 first three months are the season of earthquakes, the next four the sickly 

 season, the others the season of famine. However M. Lambert's theory 

 may be received, it tends to confirm the connection between the atmo- 

 sphere, the seasons, and diseases, with volcanic phenomena. There is an 

 abstract of this paper in Ferussac's Bulletin for July, 1830, p. 27. 



f If any doubt remained on this subject, it has been completely done 

 away with by the effect of the paragreles erected in the vineyard districts 

 of the south of France, by which a simple electrical conducting rod con- 

 verts hail into a thin soft flaky snow. 



% Vide examples quoted by Mr. Lyell, Geology, vol. i. p. 329, 330. 



