Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part II. For the year 1758.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.Various
History
Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part II. For the year 1758.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
On the 15th in the morning, the wind fresh at north-west, the
atmosphere hazy. Being on the sands, half a mile east of Penzance, at
10 A. M. near low water, I perceived on the surface of the sands a
very unusual inequality: for whereas there are seldom any unevennesses
there, but what are made by the rippling of the water, I found the
sands, for above 100 yards square, all full of little tubercles (each
as large as a moderate mole-hill), and in the middle a black speck on
the top, as if something had issued thence. Between these convexities
were hollow basons of an equal diameter. From one of these hollows
there issued a strong rush of water, about the bigness of a man’s
wrist, never observed there before nor since.
About a quarter after six, P. M. the sky dusky, the wind being at west
north-west, it fell quite calm. At half past six, being then in the
summer-house at Keneggy, the seat of the Hon. J. Harris, Esq; near
Penzance, with some company, we were suddenly alarmed with a rumbling
noise, as if a coach or waggon had passed near us over an uneven
pavement; but the noise was as loud in the beginning and at the end,
as in the middle; which neither the sound of thunder, or of carriages,
ever is. The sash-casements jarred: one gentleman thought his chair
moved under him; and the gardener, then in the dwelling house (about an
hundred yards distant from us) felt the stone pavement of the room he
was in move very sensibly.
In what place the shock began, and whether progressive or instantaneous
in the several places where it was felt, is uncertain, for want of
accurately determining the precise point of time in distant places.
The shock was not equally loud or violent. Its extent was from the
isles of Scilly eastward as far as Liskerd, and towards the north as
far as Camelford; thro’ which district I shall trace it, according to
the best informations I could procure.
In the island of St. Mary, Scilly, the shock was violent. On the
shores of Cornwall, opposite to Scilly (in the parish of Senan, near
the Land’s-end) the noise was heard like that of a spinning-wheel on
a chamber-floor. Below stairs there was a cry, that the house was
shaking; and the brass pans and pewter rattled one against another
in several houses in the same parish. In the adjoining parish of
St. Just, two young men being then swimming, felt a strong and very
unusual agitation of the sea. In the town of Penzance, in one house
the chamber-bell rung; in another the pewter plates, placed edgeways
on a shelf, shifted, and slid to one end of the shelf: and it was
every-where perceived more or less, according as people’s attention was
engaged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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