172 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



hundred thousand persons fell victims in the great 

 Sicilian earthquake in 1693, and probably three hun- 

 dred thousand in the two earthquakes which assailed 

 Antioch in the years 526 and 612, we are disposed to 

 assign at once to this devasting phenomenon the fore- 

 most place among the agents of destruction. But this 

 judgment must be reversed when we consider that 

 earthquakes though so fearfully and suddenly destruc- 

 tive both to life and property yet occur but seldom 

 compared with wind-storms, while the eifects of a 

 real hurricane are scarcely less destructive than those 

 of the sharpest shocks of earthquake. After ordinary 

 storms long miles of the sea-coast are strewn with the 

 wrecks of many once gallant ships, and with the bodies 

 of their hapless crews. In the spring of 1866 there 

 might be seen at a single view from the heights near 

 Plymouth twenty-two shipwrecked vessels, and this 

 after a storm, which, though severe, was but trifling 

 compared with the hurricanes which sweep over the 

 torrid zones, and thence scarcely diminished in force 

 as far north sometimes as our own latitudes. It was 

 in such a hurricane that the "Royal Charter" was 

 wrecked, and hundreds of stout ships with her. In the 

 great hurricane of 1T80, which commenced at Barba- 

 does and swept across the whole breadth of the North 

 Atlantic, fifty sail were driven ashore at the Bermudas, 

 two line-of-battle ships went down at sea, and upward 

 of twenty thousand persons lost their lives on the 



