General Science. 
405 
when the principal shock took place. The violence of the 
earthquake having disturbed the earthy strata impending over 
the subterraneous cavities existing probably in an extensive 
bed of wood, highly carbonised, occasioned the whole superior 
mass to settle. This mass pressing upon the water which had 
filled the lower cavities, forced it out, and blew up the earth 
with loud explosions. It rushed out in all directions, bringing 
with it an enormous quantity of carbonised wood , reduced most- 
ly into dust , which was ejected to the height of from 10 to 
15 feet , and fell in a black shower, mixed with the sand which 
its rapid motion had forced along : at the same time, the roar- 
ing and whistling, produced by the impetuosity of the air es- 
caping from its confinement, seemed to increase the horrible 
disorder of the trees, which every where encumbered each 
other, being blown up, cracking and splitting, and falling by 
thousands at a time. In the mean time, the surface was sink- 
ing, and a black liquid was rising up to the belly of Mr Brin- 
gier’s horse, which stood motionless, struck with panic and ter- 
ror. These occurrences occupied nearly two minutes. The 
trees kept falling here and there, and the whole surface of the 
country remained covered with holes, which, to compare small 
things with great, resembled so many craters of volcanoes, sur- 
rounded with a ring of carbonised wood and sand, which rose 
to the height of about seven feet. The depth of several of these 
holes, when measured some time after, did not exceed twenty 
feet, but the quicksand had washed into them. Mr Bringier 
noticed a tendency to carbonisation in all the vegetable sub- 
stances that had been soaking in the ponds, produced by these 
eruptions.— American Journal of Science , vol. iii. No. 1. p. 20. 
22. Effects of Cold upon Ice.— On Lake Champlain, and other 
American lakes, and even on narrow rivers, fissures and rents 
of enormous magnitude are often made in the ice, and are al- 
ways accompanied with loud reports, like those of cannon. The 
unwary traveller, who, with his sleighs and horses, adventures 
by night, and sometimes even by day, across the great northern 
lakes, is frequently swallowed up in the openings, which are 
thus unexpectedly made in the ice. When the weather grows 
warm again, before the ice melts, the fissures close, and some- 
times the edges of them even overlap. At Plattsburg, in the 
