4g6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1795. 



loudest thunder; and indeed the storms raised evidently by the sole power of the 

 volcano, resembled in every respect all other thunder storms; the lightning fall- 

 ing and destroying every thing in its course. The house of the Marquis of Berio 

 at S. lorio, situated at the foot of Vesuvius, during one of these volcanic storms 

 was struck with lightning, which having shattered many doors and windows, and 

 damaged the furniture, left for some time a strong smell of sulphur in the rooms 

 it passed through. Out of these gigantic and volcanic clouds, besides the light- 

 ning, both during this eruption and that of 17795 I have seen balls of fire issue, 

 and some of a considerable magnitude, which bursting in the air, produced 

 nearly the same effect as that from the air-balloons in fireworks, the electric fire 

 that came out having the appearance of the serpents with which those firework 

 balloons are often filled. The day on which Naples was in the greatest danger 

 from the volcanic clouds, 2 small balls of fire, joined together by a small link 

 like a chain-shot, fell close to my casino, at Posilipo; they separated, and one 

 fell in the vineyard above the house, and the other in the sea, so close to it that 

 I heard a splash in the water. The Abbe Tata, in his printed account of this 

 eruption, mentions an enormous ball of this kind which flew out of the crater 

 of Vesuvius while he was standing on the edge of it, and which burst in the air 

 at some distance from the mountain, soon after which he heard a noise like the 

 fall of a number of stones, or of a heavy shower of hail. 



About 4 o'clock in the morning of the 1 6th, the crater of Vesuvius began to 

 show signs of being open, by some black smoke issuing out of it; and at day- 

 break another smoke, tinged with red, issuing from an opening near the crater, 

 but on the other side of the moimtain, and facing the town of Ottaiano, showed 

 that a new mouth had opened there, and from which a considerable stream of 

 lava issued, and ran with great velocity through a wood, which it burnt; and 

 having run about 3 miles in a few hours, it stopped before it had arrived at the 

 vineyards and cultivated lands. The crater, and all the conical part of Vesuvius, 

 was soon involved in clouds and darkness, and so it remained for several days; 

 but above these clouds, though of a great height, we could often discern fresh 

 columns of smoke from the crater, rising furiously still higher, till the whole 

 mass remained in the usual form of a pine tree; and in that gigantic mass of 

 heavy clouds the ferilli, or volcanic lightning, was frequently visible, even in the 

 day time. About 5 o'clock in the morning of the ]6th we could plainly per- 

 ceive that the lava, which had first broke out from the several new mouths on the 

 south side of the mountain, had reached the sea, and was running into it, hav- 

 ing overwhelmed, burnt, and destroyed the greatest part of Torre del Greco, 

 the principal stream of lava having taken its course through the very centre of 

 the town. We observed from Naples, that when the lava was in the vineyards 

 in its way to the town, there issued often, and in different parts of it, a bright 



