The remarkable inundations that have recently taken place (I do not, of course, allude to the accident at Holmesfirth) in various parts of the country, without any such very long-continued and violent storms of rain as one would naturally look to as their cause, have called to my recollection some remarks in the "Notices Scientifiques" of M. Arago, attached to the Annuaire pour l'An 1838, published by the Bureau des Longitudes at Paris. I beg to transcribe them:
"Des historiens, les météorologistes citent des inondations locales dont les effets ont semblé bien supérieures à ce que pouvoit faire craindre la médiocre quantité de pluie provenante des nuages et tombée dans un certain rayon. Il est rarement arrivé qu'alors on n'ait pas vu, pendant un temps plus ou moins long, d'immense masses d'eau surgir des entrailles de la terre par des ouvertures jusque là inconnues, et aussi, qu'un violent orage n'ait pas été la précurseur du phénomène et probablement sa cause première. Telles furent, du point en point, par example, en juin, 1686, les circonstances de l'inondation qui détruisit presque en totalité les deux villages de Ketlevell et de Starbottom, dans le comté d'York. Pendant l'orage une immense crevasse se forma dans la montagne voisine, et, au dire des témoins oculaires, la masse fluide qui s'en échappa avec impétuosité contribua au moins tout autant que la pluie, aux malheurs qu'on eut à déplores."—P. 361.
1. Is there any reason to suppose that a subterranean outburst of this nature accompanied any of the recent inundations?
2. Does the "immense crevice" alluded to by M. Arago still exist? and does water continue to proceed from it?
SYDNEY SMIRKE.
A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL QUERY.
In the year 1704 was published anonymously:
"An Essay towards a Proposal for Catholic Communion; wherein above sixty of the principal controverted points, which have hitherto divided Christendom, being called over, 'tis examined how many of them may, and ought to be laid aside, and how few remain to be accommodated, for the effecting a general Peace. By a Minister of the Church of England. Sold by John Nutt, near Stationers' Hall, 1704."
This Essay has passed through several editions in London and Dublin: to that of 1801 is prefixed a
"Dedication to the Right Hon. the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and to the Hon. the House of Commons ... and the perusal of it earnestly recommended by a Lover of Christian Peace and Union and a Loyal United Briton."