Mr. Mallet's Notice of the British Earthquake of November 9, 1852. 399 



greatest disturbance or summit of the wave, and is gradually lost in all di- 

 rections to observation, whether unaided or instrumental. Were our earth 

 perfectly elastic, in fact every earthquake, however slight, would shake the 

 whole globe. 



The author's own experience at Glasnevin, near Dublin, was that of being 

 suddenly aroused from sound sleep, with some slight sense of alarm by, as 

 it seemed to him, a tremulous shock, with a dead, heavy, thump-like sound, 

 such as a very heavy bag of wet sand might make if dropped from some 

 feet above, upon a large planked floor ; his immediate thought was, that some 

 heavy man had jumped upon the floor of the room beneath his bedroom ; and 

 conceiving the possibility of house-breakers, he looked out of the window and 

 listened attentively for a few seconds. Not a sound disturbed the singular still- 

 ness of the dull, dark-gray leaden haze that hung over the winter morning ; 

 he fancied his wife must have started in sleep, and returned directly to bed 

 again. The notion of an earthquake never occurred to him, and it was not 

 until its occurence was remarked to him by others at noon, that he connected 

 his disturbance with such an event. Several families residing in the author's 

 neighbourhood, however, were so much alarmed by the disturbance (more par- 

 ticularly in a few instances where some of the members had been familiar with 

 earthquakes abroad, and at once recognised this as one), that they remained up 

 all the rest of the night, or rather early morning. 



On arriving in town he found a large framed drawing of 4 feet 9 inches 

 long, by 2 feet 7 inches deep, and weighing about 7 lbs., which had hung by 

 two brass rings attached by leather straps to the frame against a wall of his 

 ofiice, ranging S. by W. and E. by N. fallen down and wedged diagonally in 

 its own plane between two walls which started at right angles from the wall 

 against which it hung, and at an interval not much wider than the breadth of 

 the framed drawing. The leather straps of the rings were torn asunder, and 

 on examination proved to have been a little decayed by age and drought ; but 

 the leather, on trial, was still found to possess such toughness that a weiglit 

 much beyond that of the drawing and frame would have been incapable of 

 rending either of them. 



The author made these observations before the occurrence of an earthquake 

 had been noticed to him; he afterwards returned to the matter and carefully 

 observed the conditions in which the drawing hung, and under which it was 

 found fallen. Of this, more hereafter. 



