Some other peculiarities are adduced to show the connection between atmospheric disturbances and earthquakes. In Central and Tropical America the temperature is said to fall after any shock. After the earthquake at Lechsand, Sweden, in 1856, the temperature fell eighty-six degrees. The same shock was violent as far as Smyrna in Asia Minor, where the thermometer fell at once twenty-nine degrees, the night being the coldest of the winter. Many similar cases are mentioned. But in view of the fact that one hundred times as many sudden and marked changes of temperature occur every year in various localities without the intervention of an earthquake, it seems difficult to regard the above instances as more than mere coincidences. The greatest fall in temperature the writer ever experienced occurred within three hours of a transit of Venus; but one swallow--nor a flock of them--cannot make a summer. Barometric observations have been dragged into the combat. The great Lisbon earthquake, and the convulsion in Calabria, were preceded by low barometer. Similar observations have been made in this century. The constantly recurring shocks of 1855-56 were in each case preceded by fall of barometers. But Humboldt, in South America, and Ehrmann, in Central America, were unable to find such order; though the shocks were so invariably followed by such changes that unusual earthquakes were believed by the natives (as is also believed in India) to advance the rainy season. The resultant electric phenomena might produce this expedition. But in this field all at present is mere guess work. The exceptions to any association of earthquake and storm are so far the rule; except in case of a volcanic eruption also occurring. In the latter case a storm invariably follows, so far as present observations go; but then the storm is not co-extensive with the earthquake, but is usually confined to the neighborhood of the volcano. It should be noticed that certain scientists have endeavored to prove these convulsions are due to planetary influence. It does not appear that they have been able to find the least trace of any connection between the earth’s convulsions and the planets; but some affirm the existence of an earthquake cycle coincident with the Saros of the moon. Effort is also made to connect earthquakes and volcanoes with the gigantic convulsions of the sun, known as “sun spots.” It is argued by certain advocates of the molten interior that the attraction of the sun and moon produces an interior tidal wave, like that of the sea; and any irregularities in this produce the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Objections to the molten interior have been already noted; and in regard to the other suggestions, so long as the great convulsions are peculiarly prevalent in certain regions, so long it will be necessary to seek their chief cause or most powerful modifiers in entirely local influences.