Dr. C. Davison on Earthquake- Sounds. 57 



years 1822-1826. Partsch, in his valuable memoir describing 

 them, inserts a chronicle of the shocks and sounds observed 

 by a resident in the island, from Nov. 17, 1824, to Feb. 18, 

 1826 ; from which it appears that there were during this 

 time 30 shocks and 71 detonations. Of the shocks, all but 

 three were accompanied by sound ; and 18 of the remaining 

 shocks are described as " succussory/' ?'. e. they consisted of 

 a more or less vertical movement *. 



The district surrounding East Haddam, in Connecticut, 

 U.S.A., is another in which earth-sounds were at one time 

 frequent. Before the English settlements, they were well 

 known to the Indian inhabitants, who called the place 

 Morehemoodus, or place of noises, and u drove a prodigious 

 trade at worshipping the devil " there. The sounds are 

 described in the following terms by a writer in 1729 : — 

 '* Whether it be lire or air distressed in the subterraneous 

 caverns of the earth, cannot be known ; for there is no erup- 

 tion, no explosion perceptible, but by sounds and tremors, 

 which sometimes are very fearful and dreadful. I have 

 myself heard eight or ten sounds successively, and imitating 

 small arms, in the space of live minutes. I have, I suppose, 

 heard several hundreds of them within twenty years ; some 

 more, some less terrible. Sometimes we have heard them 

 almost every day, and great numbers of them in the space of 

 a year. Oftentimes I have observed them to be coming 

 down from the north imitating slow thunder, until the sound 

 came near, or right under, and then there seemed to be a 

 breaking, like the noise of a cannon shot, or severe thunder, 

 which shakes the houses and all that is in them." Another 

 observer, writing about the beginning of the present, or end 

 of the last century, says : — " The awful noises described in 

 the preceding extract .... continue to the present time. 

 The effects they produce are various as the intermediate 

 degrees between the roar of a cannon and the noise of a 

 pistol. The concussions of the earth, made at the same time, 

 are as much diversified as the sounds in the air. The shock 

 they give to a dwelling-house is the same as the falling of 

 logs on the floor. The smaller shocks .... are spoken of as 

 usual occurrences, and are called Moodus noises. But when 

 they are so violent as to be heard in the adjacent houses, they 

 are called earthquakes " f . 



* Bericht iiber das Detonations Phiinomen auf der Insel Meleda bey 

 Bagum (Wien, 1826) pp. 204-211. 



f Quoted by W. T. Brigham, Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., Mem. vol. ii. 

 1871. pp. 14-16. 



