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IV. A Letter from the Honourable William 
Hamilton, his Majefly s Envoy Extraor- 
dinary at Naples, to Mathew Maty, M, D. 
Sec.R^S. containing fo7ne farther Particulars 
on Mount Vefuvius, and other V olcanos in 
the Neighbourhood* 
Sir, 
Vrlla Angelica, near Mount Vefuvius,. 
Odcber4, 1768. 
Read February 2, T HAVE but very lately received 
iy'^ 9 ' your laft obliging letter, of the 5th 
of July, with the volume of Phiiofophical Tran- 
fadions. 
I muft beg of you to exprefs my fatisfadion at the. 
notice the Royal Society have been pleafed to take of 
my accounts of the two laft eruptions of Mount Ve- 
fuvius. Since I have been at my villa here, I have 
enquired of the inhabitants of the mountain after 
what they had feen during the laft eruption. In my 
letter to Lord Morton, I mentioned nothing but what 
came immediately under my own obfervation : but 
as all the peafants here agree in their account of the 
terrible thunder and lightning, which laffcd almoft 
the whole time of the eruption, upon the mountain 
only; I think it a circumftance worth attending to. 
Befides the lightning, which perfeclly rcfembled the 
common forked lightning, there were many meteors, 
like what arc vulgarly called falling Ears. A pea- 
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