Things not generally Known. 



neous mountain, however terrific and picturesque the spectacle 

 may be which it presents to our contemplation, is always limited 

 to a very small space. It is far otherwise with earthquakes, 

 which, although scarcely perceptible to the eye, nevertheless 

 simultaneously propagate their waves to a distance of many 

 thousand miles. The great earthquake which destroyed the 

 city of Lisbon, November 1st, 1755, was felt in the Alps, on 

 the coast of Sweden, into the Antilles, Antigua, Barbadoes, 

 and Martinique ; in the great Canadian lakes, in Thuringia, in 

 the flat country of northern Germany, and in the small inland 

 lakes on the shores of the Baltic. Remote springs were inter- 

 rupted in their flow, a phenomenon attending earthquakes 

 which had been noticed among the ancients by Demetrius the 

 Callatian. The hot springs of Toplitz dried up and returned, 

 inundating every thing around, and having their waters co- 

 loured with iron ochre. At Cadiz, the sea rose to an elevation 

 of sixty-four feet ; while in the Antilles, where the tide usually 

 rises only from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches, it suddenly 

 rose about twenty feet, the water being of an inky blackness. 

 It has been computed that, on November 1st, 1755, a portion 

 of the earth's surface four times greater than that of Europe 

 was simultaneously shaken.* As yet there is no manifestation 

 of force known to us (says the vivid denunciation of the phi- 

 losopher), including even the murderous invention of our own 

 race, by which a greater number of people have been killed in 

 the short space of a few minutes : 60,000 were destroyed in 

 Sicily in 1693, from 30,000 to 40,000 in the earthquake of Rio- 

 bamba in 1797, and probably five times as many in Asia Minor 

 and Syria under Tiberius and Justinian the elder, about the 

 years 19 and 526. 



GEOLOGICAL AGE OF THE DIAMOND. 



The discovery of Diamonds in Russia, far from the tropical 

 zone, has excited much interest among geologists. In the de- 

 tritus on the banks of the Adolfskoi, no fewer than forty dia- 

 monds have been found in the gold alluvium, only twenty feet 

 above the stratum in which the remains of mammoths and rhi- 

 noceroses are found. Hence Humboldt has concluded that the 

 formation of gold-veins, and consequently of diamonds, is com- 

 paratively of recent date, and scarcely anterior to the destruc- 

 tion of the mammoths. Sir Roderick Murchison and M. Ver- 



* It has been computed that the shock of this earthquake pervaded an area 

 of 700,000 miles, or the twelfth part of the circumference of the globe. This 

 dreadful shock lasted only five minutes; and nearly the whole of the population 

 being within the churches Con the feast of All Saints), no less than 30,COO per- 

 sons perished by the fall of these edifices. See Daubeny on Volcanoes; Translator's 

 note, Humboldfs Cosmos. 



