Mr. Matter on the Dynamics of Earthquakes. 53 
partially round, and removed sometimes nine inches from their position, without 
falling.” This is all that Lyell says upon the subject ; he contents himself, appa- 
rently, with the vorticose account of the Neapolitan Academy. 
I have found some few other notices of similar phenomena in old books of 
travels; two additional instances, however, will be sufficient. The first will be 
found in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Institution, in a narrative of the 
earthquake in Chili, of November, 1822, communicated by F. Place, Esq. 
The Church of La Merceda, at Valparaiso, stood with its length north and 
south, built of burned bricks (the houses are built of adobes, or sun-dried 
bricks). “ The church tower, sixty feet high, was levelled.” “ The two side 
walls, full of rents, were left standing, supporting part of the shattered roof, 
but the two end walls were entirely demolished. On each side of the church 
were four massive buttresses, six feet square, of good brick-work; those on the 
western side were thrown down, and broken to pieces, as were two on the 
eastern side. The other two were twisted off from the wall, in a north-easterly 
direction, and left standing.” 
The direction of the shocks was thought to be from the south-west or from 
the north-west. We shall see hereafter evidence, in the twisting of the two 
remaining buttresses, that the former was the real direction of the shocks, and 
that there was no vorticose motion (indeed the very idea of two vortices, with 
centres only a few feet apart, is absurd upon the face of it), but that the twisting 
