“In 1794, a still more violent eruption occurred; it was expected by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, the crater being nearly filled, and the water in the wells having subsided; showers of immense stones were projected to a great height, and ashes were thrown out so copiously, that they were very thick at Taranto, two hundred and fifty miles off; some of them were also wet with salt water. A heavy noxious vapour, supposed to be carbonic acid, issued in many places from the earth, and destroyed the vineyards in which it was suffered to remain stagnant. A part of the town of Torre de Greco was overwhelmed by a stream of lava, which ran through it into the sea. “The shocks of earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanoes, are, in all probability, modifications of the effects of one common cause: the same countries are subject to both of them; and where the agitation produced by an earthquake extends farther than there is any reason to suspect a subterraneous commotion, it is probably propagated through the earth nearly in the same manner as a noise conveyed through the air. “Volcanoes are found in almost all parts of the world, but most commonly in the neighbourhood of the sea; and especially in small islands: for instance, Italy, Sicily, Japan, the Caribbees, the Cape Verd islands, the Canaries, and the Azores: there are also numerous volcanoes in Mexico, and Peru, especially Pichincha, and Cotopaxi. The subterraneous fires, which are constantly kept up in an open volcano, depend, perhaps in general, on sulphurous combinations, and decompositions, like the heating of a heap of wet pyrites, or an union of sulphur and iron filings: but in other cases, they may, perhaps, approach more nearly to the nature of common fires. A mountain of coal has been burning in Siberia for nearly a century, and most probably has undermined, in some degree, the neighbouring country. “The immediate cause of an eruption appears to be very frequently an admission of water from the sea, or from subterraneous reservoirs; it has often happened that boiling water has frequently been discharged in great quantities from a volcano; and the force of steam, is, perhaps, more adequate to the production of violent explosions, than any other power in nature. The consequence of such an admission of water, into an immense collection of ignited materials, may, in some measure, be understood, from the accidents which occasionally happen in foundries; thus, a whole furnace of melted iron was a few years ago dissipated into the air in Colebrook Dale, by the effects of a flood which suddenly overflowed it. The phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes are amply illustrated by the particular accounts, transmitted to the Royal Society by Sir William Hamilton, of those which have happened at different times in Italy.”—POLEHAMPTON.