274 Mr Richard Edmonds on Earthquakes 
the Orkneys on the following day at three A.M.; and at the 
Shetland Isles at ten A.M. 
It was observed again, on the 6th and 7th, at Arbroath 
and other places on the east coast of Scotland, and at the 
Shetland Isles. On the 8th, at ten A.M., it occurred near 
Tynemouth, on the coast of Northumberland. 
The storm which passed over Britain on the 5th of July 
1843, was one “ which for severity and extent has been rarely 
equalled.”* In Mount’s-bay it commenced with a sudden 
gale from the south, between two and three P.M., at which 
time the oscillation of the sea had not subsided. A violent 
thunder storm was experienced in Gloucester at three P.M. ; 
at Sheffield and Liverpool between five and six P.M.; at York, 
Dumfries, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Arbroath, at seven P.M., 
during the oscillation at the last of these places; at Aber- 
deen at eight P.M.; at Kinnaird’s Head at nine P.M.; and in 
the same night at the Orkneys, where the agitation of the 
sea was observed at three o’clock the following morning. 
The agitations of the sea on the 5th of July 1843, were 
very similar to those on the day of the great earthquake of 
1755. On each occasion the atmosphere was in a most re- 
markable condition,—manifested in 1843 by the depressed 
state of the barometer and violent thunder storms ; and in 
1755 by the extraordinary height} of the barometer and the 
unusually calm and fine weather. And as the agitations ge- 
nerally of 1755 and 18438 arrived at different places at times 
corresponding in some degree to their respective distances 
from a supposed point,t they might all have resulted from 
local submarine shocks occurring progressively as the highly 
electrified state of the earth or air spread itself from some 
centre. That certain sea-ports were passed over without 
* Mr Milne, Edinburgh Royal Society Transactions, vol. xv. p. 622. 
From this paper I have derived most of the preceding particulars re- 
lative to the phenomena of the 5th of July. 
+ Higher than for three years before in Cornwall.—Borlase’s Nat. 
Hist. of Cornwall, p. 53. 
{ Mr Milne, Jameson’s Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, October 
1841, pp. 263-269. 
