37 2 Dr. Gray’s Account of the Earthquake 
thy of their attention, I shall proceed to make a few observa- 
tions upon them ; and particularly to examine how far it is 
possible, by tracing the direction of the earthquake, to deter- 
mine whether it was produced by a central force acting in all 
directions, or whether, like a blast of wind, it had a progres- 
sive motion one way only. 
And first I must observe, that all ideas of its direction, 
founded on the sensations of those who felt it, are so vague 
and contradictory as to render it impossible to draw any 
conclusion from them. Mr. Gregory, who in his letter says 
the blast came from the west, says also, that people in gene- 
ral seem confident that the shocks came from the north-east, 
but that many think they came from the south ; and that, to 
himself, the second shock appeared to come from the north. 
Dr. Storer says the direction appeared to him to be from 
the north-east to the south-west, but to others it appeared 
the reverse. The accounts of the earthquake’s direction in the 
county newspapers are as various as the above ; but I think 
it needless to give any farther proofs of what I have ad- 
vanced, and shall only observe that, various as the opinions of 
those who felt the earthquake were, with respect to its direc- 
tion, the greater number of persons agreed in thinking it to 
have been from some northern point towards a southern one ; 
which, as we shall presently see, is as contrary as possible to 
that direction which is deduced from observations of the time 
at which it was felt in different places. 
In the county papers, the earthquake is said to have been 
felt at Bristol, and in some parts of Gloucestershire, some mi- 
nutes before eleven. At Worcester, it is said (by Dr. John- 
stone) to have been felt about eleven, or five minutes after 
