^^6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. fANNOlOQS. 



from the burning or not burning of this hill, Naples concludes its safety or 

 danger from earthquakes: for doubtless the matter is continually burning under 

 the mountain; and those vast clouds of smoke which daily issue out at the top, 

 if the cavity happen, by any rock or inward alteration, to be stopped, must 

 deviate through other passages under ground, heaping up continually magazines 

 for a future calamity. Now this combustible matter seeins to be nothing but 

 nitre mixed with some other minerals and sulphur: for he that has seen the 

 way of making salt of tartar by deflagration, where an equal quantity of pul- 

 verized nitre is mixed, has an exact type of these burning hills: for after each 

 spoonful that is put into the burning crucible, there arises first a black, thick 

 sujoke, after which the fired mineral boils up, as if it would over-run the top of 

 the crucible. 



This I take to be the matter. But in the second place, how this motion of 

 the earth is performed, is not so easily explicable, especially if one considers, 

 that the motion of the earth is not from the perpendicular, but horizontal ; as 

 appears by the cracks in the earth, which are now to be found all over Sicily. It 

 is a vibration so quick that it cracks the glass in the windows; and the recipro- 

 cations of a lute-string are not more frequent. Now when the vibrations are 

 so quick, and the body moved so large, the motion must be prodigiously violent, 

 and consequently the cause also. 



Extract from another Account, concerning the late Earthquake in Sicily. 



N° 202, p. 830. 



The island of Sicily, of 700 miles circuit, and divided into three valleys, 

 began on Friday the Qth of Jan. 1693, to be sensible of the shock in the valley 

 of Mazara: but in the two other valleys of Emone and Noto, the shocks were 

 so terrible, as to throw down some buildings, obliging the inhabitants to seek 

 refuge in the fields, or in the churches. On Sunday following, being the 11th 

 . of the same month, the shock became much more terrible and general. 



Palermo received damage in most of its buildings, especially in the palace and 

 hospital of St. Bartholomew. The steeple of St. Nicholas, belonging to the 

 Augustines, was ruined, and some injury done to the church. 



In Messina, all the buildings of the theatre are shattered, the royal and arch- 

 bishop's palace, with the seminary, are all cracked. The vast and stately church 

 of the Franciscans broken in many places, and the roof of the vestry fallen: the 

 steeple of the church of the Annunciation thrown down, with the death of the 

 sexton. The top of the spire of the dome cleft, all the other religious houses 

 and public buildings were saved. Many private buildings thrown down, and all 

 the rest obliged to be shored up. A few persons killed. 



