1884.] Earthquakes and Electricity . 5 
The last extract in our series is one from an article on 
“ The City of Earthquakes,” in the “ Atlantic Monthly 
Magazine ” for March, 1883, by Mr. Horace D. Warner, a 
Civil Engineer who was present at Caracas during the last 
earthquake there, on September 6th, 1882. It appears that 
it was accompanied by a coast wave, and that serious 
damage was almost wholly confined to the river suburb, the 
higher portions of the town, built on a rocky substratum, 
being untouched. He says that “ a native of Venezuela 
would laugh at the idea that a terremoto is an upheaval of 
the ground. The movement of dislodged rocks, the dis- 
jointment of house-walls and their way of falling, the 
motions of a tidal wave during the progress of an earth- 
quake, all prove that the shock is a lateral push.” This 
statement seems to corroborate the idea already suggested, 
in reference to the writings of Mr. William Nicholson in 
1 787, that the shock is probably a discharge not of the con- 
centrated nature of an explosion, but rather that due to a 
sudden escape of accumulated force from the ground over an area 
of some extent, — a theory to which the fadts attendant on 
eledtrical leak discharges are eminently favourable. 
In order to strengthen the idea of the eledtrical origin of 
earthquakes we will now submit a list of some of those 
events the records of which show that they were preceded, 
accompanied, or followed, by storms of thunder and light- 
ning. The incidents, unless otherwise annotated, are seledted 
from Mallet’s Reports. 
Preceded by Thunderstorms (6 cases). 
1728. August 3. Berne. 
1784. April 1. Calabria. 
1799. December 11. Sile- 
sia. 
1828. Jan. 16. Hungary. 
1830. June 26. Honan, 
China. 
1881. July 22. Morges, 
Switzerland. (Standard, 
July 23, 1881.) 
Accompanied by Thunderstorms (45 cases). 
1606 (B.C.). Mount Sinai. 
365 (A.D.). Julyzi. Greece 
and Asia Minor. 
557. Constantinople and 
Antioch. 
855. Mayence. 
1062. Switzerland. 
1091. Angers. 
1117. Jan. Upper Italy. 
1117. May. Liege. 
1138. Wurzburg. 
1274. England. 
1365. Bologna. 
1530. Flanders. 
1560. Dec. 13. Vienna. 
1563. Belgium. 
