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animal race pcrifhed at the time of the Noachian deluge, was 

 announced by Noah one hundred and twenty years before it 

 happened; and I remarked that every fucceeding calamity, by 

 which large portions of mankind were affeded, and of which 

 diftind; accounts have reached us, as volcanic eruptions and 

 earthquakes, have conftantly been announced by extraordinary 

 events, to which if fufficient attention were paid, the impend- 

 ing deftrudion might have been forefeen, and in great meafure 

 prevented ; and yet thefe difafters are the refult, not of a viola- 

 tion, but barely of the more occult operation of the laws of 

 ijature. 



Thus the firft eruption of Mount Vefuvius in the 79th year 

 of our sera, which overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii, was 

 preceded by earthquakes, and hoarfe rumbling fubtcrraneous 

 founds refembling thunder, and an unufual cloud of fmoke*. 



Sir William Hamilton, relating the late tremendous eruption 

 of this mountain in 1795, remarks that the claflical accounts of 

 the eruption in 79, and that of the fubfequent great eruption in 

 163 1, fo nearly agree, that the former might, by only changing the 

 date, pafs for an account of the laft, fo exadly did their cir- 

 cumftances refemble each other. And moreover adds, that if the 

 fubtcrraneous noifes, the decrcafe of water in the wells, and a 



Vol. VIII. Y few 



* 6 CoUeft. Acad, and Pliny's Letter*. 



