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IV. An Account of the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In a 
Letter from the Right Honourable Sir William Hamilton, 
K, B. F. R. S to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart . P.R.S. 
Read January 15, 1795. 
SIR, Naples, August 25 th, 1794. 
Every day produces some new publication relative to the 
late tremendous eruption of mount Vesuvius, so that the va- 
rious phenomena that attended it will be found on record in 
either one or other of these publications, and are not in that 
danger of being passed over and forgotten, as they were for- 
merly, when the study of natural history was either totally 
neglected, or treated of in a manner very unworthy of the 
great Author of nature. I am sorry to say, that even so late 
as in the accounts of the earthquakes in Calabria in 1783, 
printed at Naples, nature is taxed with being malevolent, and 
bent upon destruction. In a printed account of another great 
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1631, by Antonio Santorelli, 
doctor of medicine, and professor of natural philosophy in the 
university of Naples, and at the head of the fourth chapter 
of his book, are these words: Se questo incendio sia opera de’ de- 
monii? Whether this eruption be the work of devils ? The account 
of an eruption of Vesuvius in 1737, published at Naples by 
Doctor Serao, is of a very different cast, and does great ho- 
nour to his memory. All great eruptions of volcanoes must 
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