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 To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.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

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 To which are added, explanatory notes by the author, hitherto unpublished.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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$obfervation: but as all the peafants here agree in their account of the -terrible thun- der and lightning, which lafted almoft the whole time of the eruption, upon the mountain only; I think it a circumftance worth attending to. Befides the lightning, which perfectly refembled the common forked lightning, there were many meteors, like what are vulgarly called falling ftars. A peafant, in my neighbourhood, loft eight hogs by the afhes falling into the trough with their food: they grew giddy, and died in a few hours. The laft day of the eruption, the afhes, which fell abundantly upon the mountain, were as white almoft. as {now [¢]; and the old people here affure [o] In fome accounts of an eruption of Vefuvius in 1660, I find mention made of afhes which fell in the fhape of crofles, and were looked upon as highly mira- culous; but in one book upon this fubjeét, intituled, | Athanafii Kircheri Soc. Fef: De prodigiofis crucibus, Se. ° Roma, MDCLXI, a very philofophical account is given: of this phenomenon ;_he fays, that, in 1660, from the 16th of Auguft to the 16th of October, Vefuvius caft up afhes, impregnated with nitrous, faline, and bitu-- me,$