150 
COINCIDENT PHENOMENA. 
It is an opinion very generally prevalent on the coasts 
of Terra lirma, that earthquakes become more fcequent 
when electric explosions have been during some years rare. 
It is supposed to have been observed, at Cumanu and at 
Caracas, that the rains were less frequently attended with 
thunder from the year 1792 ; and the total destruction of 
Cumana in 1797, as well as the commotions felt in 1800, 
1801, and 1S02, at Maracaibo, Porto Cabcllo, and Caracas, 
have not failed to be attributed to an accumulation of 
electricity in the interior of the earth. Persons who have 
lived long in New Andalusia, or in the low regions of Peru, 
will admit that the period most to be dreaded for the fre- 
quency of earthquakes is the beginning of the rainy season, 
which, however, is also the season of thunder-storms. The 
atmosphere and the state of the surface of the globe seem 
to exercise an influence unknown to us on the changes 
which take place at great depths; and I am inclined D to 
think that the connection which it is supposed has been 
traced between the absence of thunder-storms and the fre- 
quency of earthquakes, is rather a physical hypothesis 
framed by the half-learned of the country than the result 
of long experience. The coincidence of certain phenomena 
may be favoured by chance. The extraordinary commotions 
felt almost continually during the space of two years on 
the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, and which cor- 
responded in 1S12 with those of the valley of Caracas, were 
preceded at Louisiana by a year almost exempt from thun- 
der-storms. The public mind was again struck with this 
phenomenon. We cannot be surprised that there should be 
in the native land of 1'ranldin a great readiness to receive 
explanations founded on the theory of electricity. 
The shock felt at Caracas in the month of December 
1811, was the only one which preceded the terrible catas- 
trophe of the 2Gth of March, 1812. The inhabitants of 
Terra Pinna were alike ignorant of the agitations of the 
volcano in the island of St. Vincent, and of those felt in 
the basin of the Mississippi, where, on the 7th and 8th 
of Pebruary, 1812, the earth was day and night in perpetual 
oscillation. A great drought prevailed at this period in 
the province of Venezuela. Not a single drop of rain had 
fallen at Caracas or in the country to the distance of ninety 
