Cliap. 82.] CLEFTS or THE EAETH. 113 



down, and in others swallowed up by a deep cleft ^ ; some- 

 times great masses of earth are heaped up, and rivers forced 

 out, sometimes even flame and hot springs'^, and at others 

 the course of rivers is turned. A terrible noise precedes 

 and accompanies the shock' ; sometimes a murmuring, like 

 the lowing of cattle, or like human voices, or the clashing of 

 arms. This depends on the substance which receives the 

 sound, and the shape of the caverns or crevices through 

 which it issues ; it being more shrill from a narrow opening, 

 more hoarse from one that is curved, producing a loud rever- 

 beration from hard bodies, a sound like a boiling fluid^ from 

 moist substances, fluctuating in stagnant water, and roaring 

 when forced against solid bodies. There is, therefore, often 

 the sound without any motion. Nor is it a simple motion, 

 but one that is tremulous and vibratory. The cleft some- 

 times remains, displaying what it has swallowed up ; some- 

 times concealing it, the mouth being closed and the soil 

 being brought over it, so that no vestige is left ; the city 

 being, as it were, devoured, andthetract of country engulfed. 

 Maritime districts are more especially subject to shocks. 

 Nor are mountainous tracts exempt from them ; I have found, 

 by my inquiries, that the Alps and the Apennines are fre- 

 quently shaken. The shocks happen more frequently in the 

 autumn and in the spring, as is the case also with thunder. 

 There are seldom shocks in Gaul and in Egj^t ; in the latter 

 it depends on the prevalence of summer, in the former, of 

 winter. They also happen more frequently in the night than 

 in the day. The greatest shocks are in the morning and the 

 evening ; but they often take place at day -break, and some- 

 times at noon. They also take place during eclipses of the 

 sun and of the moon, because at that time storms are lulled. 

 They are most frequent when great heat succeeds to showers, 

 or showers succeed to great heat^. 



^ Poinsinet entCTs into a long detail of some of the most remarkable 

 earthquakes that have occurred, from the age of Pliny to the period when 

 he wrote, about fifty years ago ; i. 249. 2. 2 gee .^stotle, Meteor, ii. 8. 



3 See Aristotle, Meteor, ii. 8, and Seneca, Nat. Qusest. vi. 13. 



* " Fervente ; " " Fremitum aquse ferrentis imitante." Alexandre in 

 Lemaire, i. 404. 



^ The reader will scarcely require to be informed, that many of the 



remarks in the latter part of this chapter are incorrect. Our author haa 



principally followed Aristotle, whose treatise on meteorology, although 



aboimding in curious details, is perhaps one of the least correct of his works. 



VOL. I. I 



