Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other volcanos: in a series of letters, addressed to the Royal Society / from the Honourable Sir W. Hamilton ... To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.
- William Hamilton
- Date:
- 1772
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other volcanos: in a series of letters, addressed to the Royal Society / from the Honourable Sir W. Hamilton ... To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![38° «=. OBSERVATIONS ONL if the neighbourhood’: of the: mountain, but: not at Naplesi: there were no clouds in the fky at this time, except thofe ‘of fmoak: ifluing from the. crater.of Vefuvius. TI was much. pleafed »with ‘this phenomenon, which I had not feen before in ome per- fection [m7]. - {m] Th ‘all accounts of great eruptions of Mount Ema and Mount Vefuvius, Ihave found mention of this fort of lightning. Pliny the younger, in his fecond letter to Tacitus upon the eruption of Vefuvjus in the time of Titus, fays, that a black and horrible cloud covered them at Mifenum (which is above fifteen miles from the Volcano), and that flafhes of zig-zag fire, like lightning, but ftronger, burft from it; thefe are his words: ‘ab altero latere nubes atra et horrenda **ignei {piritus tortis vibratifque difcurfibus rupta, in “Jongas flammarum figuras dehifcebat; fulgoribus s+ illze et fimiles et majores erant.” This was evidently the fame eleétrical fire, and with which Iam convinced that the fmoak of all Volcanos is pregnant... In fe- veral accounts of the great eruption ef Vefuvius in 1631, mention is made of damage done by the lightning that iffued from the celumn of {moak. Bulifon, in particujar, fays, that, in the neigh- bourhood of the Volcano, people were {truck dead in the fame manner, as if by lightning, without having their cloaths finged, Pliny mentions a like inftance,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32996676_0046.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
