654 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO J 755. 



In the little harbour of Heyle, about 4 miles north of the Mount on the 

 Severn sea, the agitation did not make its appearance till an hour and a little 

 more after the ebb began, which must be full an hour later than with us. In 

 this inland half-tide harbour it continued visible but an hour and half; the greatest 

 flux was about the middle of that time, the surge being at that time 7 feet high; 

 but in general it rose and fell but 2 feet only, owing probably to the force and 

 quantity of water being broken in its advances into so retired a creek. At Swan- 

 sea, in Wales, farther up in St. George's channel, where their ebb is later still 

 than in Heyle, the agitation was proportionably later, and was not observed till 

 after 1 hours ebb, near 3 quarters after 6. At Kingsale, in Ireland, more in- 

 deed to the north of us, but more open to the Atlantic cx:ean than Swansea, and 

 farther to the west, the agitation reached not a full hour after us, but above 1 

 hours sooner than at Swansea; all tending to show, that the force came from the 

 south and south-west. 



What relations these little palpitations, or tremulous rebounds of the sea, had 

 to the dreadful convulsions on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, whether they 

 were the fainter parts of that deplorable shock at Lisbon, or the expiring efforts 

 of some similar subterraneous strugglings of nature farther to the west, under 

 the Atlantic ocean, will remain uncertain, till more facts and dates appear; but 

 by the accounts from abroad, this first of November seems to have been a day 

 of universal tremor to all the sea-coasts of the western parts of Europe. 



I would not be thought to suggest, sir, that a shock so far ofF as the coast 

 of Spain could be so immense, as to propagate a motion of the water quite home 

 to our shores. I should rather imagine, that there were several shocks, and 

 some much nearer to us, but all perhaps from one and the same cause diffused 

 in different portions, and permeating more contracted or dilated, but still com- 

 municating passages; I should imagine, that this cause affected the seas and land, 

 in proportion to its own force, and the superior or weaker resistance of the in- 

 cumbent pressure ; that where it found the least resistance of all, there it found 

 its vent, and the swell its cure. 



Many other similar accounts were also given, as observed both in the sea and 

 inland lakes: as at Swansea, on the coasts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, &c.; 

 the lakes in Cumberland; a pond near Durham, at half past 10 o'clock; at Loch 

 Ness, Loch Lomond, &c. in the north of Scotland, about 1 o'clock. 



It appears also, by communications sent from abroad, that the like agitations 

 of the water were observed at the Hague, Ley den, Harlem, Amsterdam, 

 Utrecht, Gouda, and Rotterdam, and also at Bois-le-Duc ; about 1 1 o'clock on 

 the 1st of November; and likewise at Kingsale and Cork, in Ireland, between 2 

 and 3 o'clock. 



