RAIN AND EAKTHaUAKES. Ill 



this when mentioning to some people at Copiapo 

 that there had been a sharp shock at Coquimbo : 

 they immediately cried out, " How fortunate ! there 

 will be plenty of pasture there this year." To 

 their minds an earthquake foretold rain as surely 

 as rain foretold abundant pasture. Certainly it did 

 so happen, that on the very day of the earthquake, 

 that shower of rain fell which I have described as 

 in ten days' time producing a thin sprinkling of 

 grass. At other times rain has followed earth- 

 quakes at a period of the year when it is a far 

 gi-eater ppodigy than the earthquake itself: this hap- 

 pened after the shock of November, 1822, and again 

 in 1829, at Valparaiso ; also after that of Septem- 

 ber, 1833, at Tacna. A person must be somewhat 

 habituated to the climate of these countries to per- 

 ceive the extreme improbability of rain falling at 

 such seasons, except as a consequence of some 

 law quite unconnected with the ordinary course of 

 the weather. In the cases of great volcanic erup- 

 tions, as that of Coseguina, where tori-ents of rain 

 fell at a time of the year most unusual for it, and 

 " almost unprecedented in Central America," it is 

 not difficult to understand that the volumes of va- 

 pour and clouds of ashes might have disturbed the 

 atmospheric equilibrium. Humboldt extends this 

 view to the case of earthquakes unaccompanied by 

 eruptions ; but I can hardly conceive it possible that 

 the small quantity of aeriform fluids which then es- 

 cape from the fissured ground can produce such 

 remarkable effects. There appears much proba- 

 bility in the view first proposed by Mr. P. Scrope, 

 that when the barometer is low, and when rain 

 might naturally be expected to fall, the diminished 

 pressure of the atmosphere over a wide extent of 

 country might well determine the precise day on 

 which the earth, already stretched to the utmost by 



