Jan. 1. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



9 



VOLCANIC INFLUENCB ON THE yTEATHEE. 



The recent obseryations of your correspondent 

 Mr. Noake (Vol. vi., p. 531.) on the superstitions 

 of the people of Worcestershire regarding the 

 weather, have called my attention to the present 

 extraordinary wet season, on which subject I have 

 been asked many questions. Although I do not 

 account myself any more weatherwise than my 

 neighbours, yet I may note that, for many years 

 past, I have remarked that whenever we have had 

 any very serious volcanic disturbance in the Medi- 

 terranean or its neighbourhood, or at Mount Hecla, 

 we have always had some corresponding atmo- 

 spheric agitation in this country, either in exces- 

 sive heat or moisture, or both, and accompanied 

 with very perceptible vibrations, at times so strong 

 as to answer the name of earthquakes ; and these 

 vibrating so generally in the direction from north- 

 west to south-east, I have been convinced that 

 underneath us there is a regular steam passage 

 from Mount Hecla in Iceland to Mount Vesuvius 

 in Italy. I have unfortunately mislaid my memo- 

 randa on this subject, and have no regular roster 

 of these occasional visitations to refer to, but I 

 think my attention to this effect was first impressed 

 on ine by the season which followed the destruc- 

 tion at Lisbon in 1796. I recollect a friend of 

 mine, the late Mr. Empson, of Bouley, while 

 attending some drainage improvements in his carrs 

 within the Level of Ancholme, was aroused by an 

 extraordinary noise, which he thought was occa- 

 sioned by some "drunken fools," as he called them, 

 racing with their waggons upon the turnpike road 

 above the hill, which was two miles off from where 

 he then was in the carrs. His uphill shepherd, 

 however, told him, when he got home, that there 

 had been no such occurrence as he supposed on 

 the turnpike, as, had such been the case, he must 

 have heard and seen it. The next day, however, 

 added fresh information, and better observei'S dis- 

 covered that the noise heard across the carrs was 

 underground ; and further intelligence confirmed 

 the suspicion that it was occasioned by a species 

 of earthquake that had been felt at different places 

 with different intensities, through Yorkshire and 

 Lancashire, and amongst the islands west of Scot- 

 land ; and afterwards came the same kind of in- 

 telligence across France, confirming me in my con- 

 clusions before noted. And ever since this period 

 of 1796 we have never had any extraordinary al- 

 ternation of extreme heat or wet, without its being 

 to me the result of some accompanying volcanic 

 agitation in Mount Hecla, or Mount Vesuvius or 

 its neighbourhood ; and the recurrence of the 

 violent ebullition that has this year being going 

 on at Mount Etna may therefore be considered as 

 the electric cause not only of the extraordinary 

 heat of our late summer, but also of the floods that 

 have subsequently poured down upon us. It is 



only of late years that scientific men have paid 

 due attention to these physical phenomena. Sir 

 Humphrey Davy, I think, was the first who laid 

 down their causes ; and if we recollect the account 

 given by Sir Stamford Raffles of the appalling 

 effects of the tremendous explosion of Tombora, 

 in Sambowa, one of the islands east of Java, in the 

 year 1815, described as so violent in its immediate 

 neighbourhood as to cause men, and horses, and 

 trees to be taken up into the air like chaff; and of 

 its effects being perceptible in Sumatra, where, 

 nearly at a thousand miles distance from it, they 

 heard its thundering noisy explosions, — thinking 

 of this, we may well accede the comparatively 

 small vibrations that we occasionally feel, as aris- 

 ing from the interchange of civilities passing be- 

 tween our volcanic neighbours Hecla and Vesu- 

 vius, or Etna ; and glad we may be that we have 

 them in no more inconvenient shape or degree 

 than we have hitherto experienced them. I have 

 some friends in Lancashire who have been a good 

 deal alarmed by the vibrations they have lately 

 experienced; and I must confess that my good 

 wife and myself were, on the morning of the 10th 

 Dec, not a little startled in our bed by a shock 

 that aroused us early to inquire after the cause of 

 it, but for which we cannot account otherwise than 

 that, from its sudden electric character, the Lan- 

 cashire vibration had reached us. The chief pur- 

 port, however, of my present communication is, to 

 make inquiry amongst your readers, whether any 

 of them, like myself, have observed and expe- 

 rienced any recurrence of these concomitant and 

 physical obtrusions. Wm. S. Hesledon. 



Barton upon Humber. 



Minax ^ateS. 



Value of MSS. — In the cause of Calvert v. 

 Sebright, a question arose as to the sale of a collec- 

 tion of manuscript books by the late Sir John 

 Sebright in the year 1807. In aid of the inquiry 

 before the Master, as to the difference in value of 

 the manuscripts in 1807 and the year 1849, Mr. 

 Rodd made an affidavit, from which I have made 

 the following extract, showing the prices at which 

 five lots were sold in 1807, and the prices at which 

 the same lots were sold at the late Mr. Heber's sale 

 in 1836 : 



" No. in Catalogue, 1 185. Bracton de (Hen.) Con- 

 suetudinibus et Legibus Anglicw. (In pergamena) 

 Uteris deauratis. Sold in 1807 for IZ. 13s. : produced 

 at Heber's sale, 1836, 61, 6s. 



" Lot 1 190. Gul. Malmesburiensis de Gestis Regum 

 Anglorum. (In pergamena.) Sold in 1807 for 17. 7*. : 

 produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 63l. 



"Lot 1195. Chronica Gulielmi Thorn. (In mem- 

 branis.) Sold in 1807 for 12s. : produced at Heber's 

 sale, 1836, 851. 



