GREAT EARTHQUAKES. 125 



of the these storms. While not extensive as regards the territory passed over, 

 its force was very great. Trees that were lying half buried in the ground were 

 torn from their resting place, and a stack of grain was strewn along the course of 

 the tornado for a distance of three miles. 



While the evidences of these old aerial disturbances are fast disappearing in 

 those states where the forests are giving way to cultivated fields and these in turn 

 are becoming the sites of thriving villages, the resident of thirty or forty years 

 ago has no difficulty in recalling the broken, twisted and upturned trees that were 

 left as mute witnesses of the fury of the elements in the unrecorded past. 



On the treeless plains of the west a tornado is only evidenced by the destruc- 

 tion of the improvements of the settlers, and how many there were anterior to 

 to the first inhabitants can never be known. 



GREAT EARTHQUAKES. 



England has had a good many earthquake shocks, but the one of April 22d 

 seems to have been one of the most serious. In 1089 a severe earthquake shock 

 was felf throughout England, and in 1274 the whole Island was shaken again, 

 and the town of Glastonbury was destroyed. On the 14th of November, 13 18, 

 occurred the greatest earthquake ever known in England. There was a slight 

 shock in London on the 19th of February, 1750, and both England and Scotland 

 felt a slight shock at the time of the great Lisbon earthquake in June, 1755. 



For nearly a hundred years after that there were no noticeable disturbances 

 and only slight shocks in 1855, 1863, and 1868. On the evening of March 17, 

 187 1, there was a severe shock in the northwest of England, in which houses were 

 shaken and crockery broken. In the earthquake of April 6, 1580, part of St. 

 Paul's and the Temple churches fell. But with this exception and the disturb- 

 ances of 1274 and 13 18 England has been more scared than hurt by earthquakes. 

 Certainly that country has been as free from earthquake disasters as the United 

 States, and probably has had no shake as severe as that in the Lower Mississippi 

 Valley in 181 1, when great chasms are reported to have opened in the earth. 

 This preceded by a few months the upheaval at Caraccas, Venezuela, in which 

 12,000 people perished. 



England, like the United States, has only experienced slight shocks, while 

 countries not very remote have been overwhelmed by disaster. For example, in 

 the series of earthquakes taking in the years from 1750 to 1755, England had a 

 scarcely noticeable shake. In the same series of disturbances Adrianople, Cairo, 

 Kaschan, Lisbon, Malaga and other cities were overwhelmed, 40,000 persons 

 perishing at Cairo, 40,000 at Kaschan and 50,000 at Lisbon. 



But even these were not the most destructive earthquakes. In 1693 Ca- 

 tania, in Sicily, with its 18,000 people, was literally swallowed up, not a trace of 

 city or people remaining. At the same time fifty-three other cities and 300 vil- 

 lages of Sicily were destroyed, and with them over 100,000 people perished. In 



