334 On the Earthquake felt in Sicily 
over the heads of the inhabitants of Nicolosi. At Catania, how- 
ever, and in the environs, the inhabitants were perfectly easy and 
secure. 
The hour at which the disaster occurred rendered it less_ fatal 
than if it had happened in the middle of the night. All the po- 
pulation was then awake and dispersed, except in a village of 
Etna, were the people were at church, as usual on Fridays during 
Lent. 
In Catania, large masses of stones fell from the tops of build- 
ings and beat in tueir roofs, but without killing or even severely 
wounding any person. Some of the inhabitants were affected by 
the fright, and one lady of advanced age died the same day in an 
apoplectic fit caused by terror. A large mass of lava, forming a 
natural vault above.a rock, tumbled into the sea: a fisherman 
had happily moved from the spot a few moments before, impelled, 
as reported, by a secret instinct, to doubt of the solidity of the 
lava. 
The hour when the shock happened cannot be fixed with pre- 
cision ; nor is the height of the thermometer or barometer known, 
or the quantity of rain which had fallen in the preceding days, 
there being no meteorological or astronomical observatory at 
Catania. It may however “be taken for granted that the shock 
took place from the east to the west, or rather from SE. to NW. 
Opinions are also at issue respecting the total duration of the 
phenomenon: some limit it to ten seconds, others make it forty 
seconds, The author, taking a mean between these extremes, 
supposes it may have been from 20 to 25 seconds. 
It is thought that the motion began by shocks (sussalto sou- 
Lresaults), which changed into undulations that succeeded each 
other yery rapidly; this was judged to be the case, from observing 
that cisterns full to the brim partly emptied themselves by the 
effects of the oscillations. Some statues appearing after the earth- 
quake to be turned into a rather different direction from what 
they were before, ,it was inferred that the motion was complex 
and vortical*. A considerable mass of Syracusan stone was 
turned about 25 degrees from the east towards the south. The 
colossal statue of an angel placed on the facade of a church, lost 
both arms, as if they had been lopped off with an. axe, whemeea it 
was supposed that a large portion of electric fluid had been dis- 
engaged from the earth during the convulsion. This conjecture 
is confirmed by other cireumstances, such as the bending of iron 
* It is very dificult to admit this direction in the motion ; for there must 
have resulted a nearly circular disruption in that portion’ of the ground, 
which would thus have turned on a vortical axis; and such a disruption 
must have left evident traces. 
crosses 
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