1835.] EAIX AND EARTHQUAKES. 337 



person who had long resided in New Andalusia, or in Lower Peru, 

 to deny that there exists some connection between these phenomena: 

 in another part, however, he seems to think the connection fanciful. 

 At Guayaquil, it is said that a heavy shower in the dry season is 

 invariably followed by an earthquake. In Northern Chile, from 

 the extreme infrequency of rain, or even of weather foreboding 

 rain, the probability of accidental coincidences becomes very 

 small ; yet the inhabitants are here most firmly convinced of some 

 connection between the state of the atmosphere and of the trem- 

 bling of the ground : I was much struck by 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 earthquakes at a period of the year when 

 it is a far greater prodigy than the earthquake itself: this hap- 

 pened after the shock of November, 1822, and again in 1829, at 

 Valparaiso; also after that of September, 1833, at Tacna. A person 

 must be somewhat habituated to the climate of these countries to 

 perceive 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 

 eruptions, as that of Coseguina, where torrents 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 vapour 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 escape from the fissured ground, can produce such 

 remarkable effects. There appears much probability 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 



see Trans, of British Association, 1840. For those on Coseguina see Mr. 

 Caldcleugh in Phil. Trans., 1835. In the former edition, I collected 

 several references on the coincidences between sudden falls in the baro- 

 meter and earthquakes ; and between earthquakes and meteors. 



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