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XX. Two Letters from the Hon. William 
Hamilton, His Majefty s Envoy Extra- 
ordinary at Naples, to the Earl of Morton, 
Prefident of the Royal Society, contaming 
an Account of the la ft Eruption of Mount 
Vefuvius. 
Naples, June io, 1766. 
My Lord, 
\ S I have attended particularly to the 
I?67 ’ / \ various changes of Mount Vefuvius, 
from the 17th of November 1764, the day of my 
arrival at this capital, I flatter myfelf, that my obfer- 
vations will not be unacceptable to your lordfhip, 
efpecially as this Volcano has lately made a very con- 
liderable eruption. I (hall confine myfelf merely to 
the many extraordinary appearances that have come 
under my own infpedion, and leave their explanation 
to the more learned in natural philofophy. 
During the firft twelvemonth of my being here, I 
did not perceive any remarkable alteration in the 
mountain ; but I obferved the fmoke from the mouth 
of the Volcano was much more confiderable in bad 
weather than when it was fair j and I often heard 
(even at Naples, fix miles from Vefuvius) in bad 
weather, the report of the inward explofions of the 
mountain. When I have been at the top of Mount 
Vefuvius in fair weather, I have fometimes found fo 
little 
