VOLCANIC INFLUENCE ON THE WEATHER.
The recent observations of your correspondent Mr. Noake (Vol. vi., p. 531.) on the superstitions of the people of Worcestershire regarding the weather, have called my attention to the present extraordinary wet season, on which subject I have been asked many questions. Although I do not account myself any more weatherwise than my neighbours, yet I may note that, for many years past, I have remarked that whenever we have had any very serious volcanic disturbance in the Mediterranean or its neighbourhood, or at Mount Hecla, we have always had some corresponding atmospheric agitation in this country, either in excessive heat or moisture, or both, and accompanied with very perceptible vibrations, at times so strong as to answer the name of earthquakes; and these vibrating so generally in the direction from north-west to south-east, I have been convinced that underneath us there is a regular steam passage from Mount Hecla in Iceland to Mount Vesuvius in Italy. I have unfortunately mislaid my memoranda on this subject, and have no regular roster of these occasional visitations to refer to, but I think my attention to this effect was first impressed on me by the season which followed the destruction at Lisbon in 1796. I recollect a friend of mine, the late Mr. Empson, of Bouley, while attending some drainage improvements in his carrs within the Level of Ancholme, was aroused by an extraordinary noise, which he thought was occasioned by some "drunken fools," as he called them, racing with their waggons upon the turnpike road above the hill, which was two miles off from where he then was in the carrs. His uphill shepherd, however, told him, when he got home, that there had been no such occurrence as he supposed on the turnpike, as, had such been the case, he must have heard and seen it. The next day, however, added fresh information, and better observers discovered that the noise heard across the carrs was underground; and further intelligence confirmed the suspicion that it was occasioned by a species of earthquake that had been felt at different places with different intensities, through Yorkshire and Lancashire, and amongst the islands west of Scotland; and afterwards came the same kind of intelligence across France, confirming me in my conclusions before noted. And ever since this period of 1796 we have never had any extraordinary alternation of extreme heat or wet, without its being to me the result of some accompanying volcanic agitation in Mount Hecla, or Mount Vesuvius or its neighbourhood; and the recurrence of the violent ebullition that has this year being going on at Mount Etna may therefore be considered as the electric cause not only of the extraordinary heat of our late summer, but also of the floods that have subsequently poured down upon us. It is only of late years that scientific men have paid due attention to these physical phenomena. Sir Humphrey Davy, I think, was the first who laid down their causes; and if we recollect the account given by Sir Stamford Raffles of the appalling effects of the tremendous explosion of Tombora, in Sambowa, one of the islands east of Java, in the year 1815, described as so violent in its immediate neighbourhood as to cause men, and horses, and trees to be taken up into the air like chaff; and of its effects being perceptible in Sumatra, where, nearly at a thousand miles distance from it, they heard its thundering noisy explosions,—thinking of this, we may well accede the comparatively small vibrations that we occasionally feel, as arising from the interchange of civilities passing between our volcanic neighbours Hecla and Vesuvius, or Etna; and glad we may be that we have them in no more inconvenient shape or degree than we have hitherto experienced them. I have some friends in Lancashire who have been a good deal alarmed by the vibrations they have lately experienced; and I must confess that my good wife and myself were, on the morning of the 10th Dec., not a little startled in our bed by a shock that aroused us early to inquire after the cause of it, but for which we cannot account otherwise than that, from its sudden electric character, the Lancashire vibration had reached us. The chief purport, however, of my present communication is, to make inquiry amongst your readers, whether any of them, like myself, have observed and experienced any recurrence of these concomitant and physical obtrusions.
Wm. S. Hesledon.
Barton upon Humber.
Minor Notes.
Value of MSS.—In the cause of Calvert v. Sebright, a question arose as to the sale of a collection of manuscript books by the late Sir John Sebright in the year 1807. In aid of the inquiry before the Master, as to the difference in value of the manuscripts in 1807 and the year 1849, Mr. Rodd made an affidavit, from which I have made the following extract, showing the prices at which five lots were sold in 1807, and the prices at which the same lots were sold at the late Mr. Heber's sale in 1836:
"No. in Catalogue, 1185. Bracton de (Hen.) Consuetudinibus et Legibus Anglicæ. (In pergamena) literis deauratis. Sold in 1807 for 1l. 13s.: produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 6l. 6s.
"Lot 1190. Gul. Malmesburiensis de Gestis Regum Anglorum. (In pergamena.) Sold in 1807 for 1l. 7s.: produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 63l.
"Lot 1195. Chronica Gulielmi Thorn. (In membranis.) Sold in 1807 for 12s.: produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 85l.
"Lot 1198. Henrici Archid. Huntindoniensis de Gestis Anglorum et Gyr. Cambriensis expugnatio Hiberniæ. (In pergamena.) Sold in 1807 for 2l. 1s.: produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 78l. 15s. 6d.
"Lot 1206. Chronica Matt. Parisensis sine Historia Minor cum vitâ authoris, per Doctissimum Virum Rog. Twysden Bar. (In papyro.) Sold in 1807 for 2l. 8s.: produced at Heber's sale, 1836, 5l. 15s. 6d. Total produce in 1807, 8l. 1s.: in 1836, 238l. 17s."